That was my point. Left and right used to be about social and economic policy settings. A debate over the right national system. Now it has shifted to identity politics. — apokrisis

OK. Sorry I misunderstood.
I suspect that identity has always been a factor in politics. But it is true that debates these days seem to be mostly single issue, as opposed to more comprehensive approaches that try to see each issue in the context of an overall policy setting. And the debates nowadays do suffer from that narrowness. On the other hand, it makes it easier to decide which side you're on. Perhaps that's why.

Should you even be allowed to exist with those views within a shared social system. — apokrisis

Yes, I'm afraid that when human beings find something they don't like in their environment, they prefer to remake the environment by eradicating the offending items to adjusting themselves to it. This is so pervasive that I'm not at all sure that it can be attributed to solely to social structures.

So motonormativity is in fact a generalised modern impatience. A reflection of accelerationism in a society addicted to faster/cheaper/more. — apokrisis

Yes, but again, I think you'll find that addiction is so pervasive that it seems to go deeper than social structures or cultures.

Here in NZ, cycles are legal on footpaths (we have a massive, shit-headed Green Lobby here that are insufferably stupid) and .......................................................... bus lanes. — AmadeusD

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure exactly what you are saying. Too many dots.
I'm afraid that a massive movement of any kind is liable to include some annoying and idiotic followers. There's nothing sufficiently special about Green lobbies to make them an exception.
In the UK, allowing cycles on footpaths was not connected to the green lobby. It seemed to be more related to recognizing that cycles were too vulnerable to be required to mix with cars etc. The unrecognized downside is that pedestrians are too vulnerable to be required to mix with pedal cycles - especially the athletic and impatient riders.

Well Kripke's Crusoe is isolated from birth IIRC. The distinction is important and has led to the differentiation between your Tarzans (always isolated) and your Crusoes (isolated at some later point). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm sure you're right. It's a good point even if it isn't Kripke's. I didn't realize there was a hidden code, but I'll know in future. Of course "isolated from birth" nudges us towards the experiences of and with the "wolf children". Not at all like Mowgli!

The error is to assume that language games, theories, models, words, ideas, etc. are what we know instead of that through which we know. It's unsurprising that a deflationary reader of Wittgenstein like Rorty uses the image of words and ideas as "a mirror of nature" as a foil through which to dismiss metaphysical notions of truth, while a phenomenologist relying on the pre-modern tradition like Sokolowski would rather have us speak of "lenses we look through" (not at). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perfect. Or as near as dammit.

If it isn't "for no reason at all," then we have something sitting posterior to any individual language game or any hinge propositions, namely metaphysical truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

.... and so we take the next step on the infinite regress. Yet we can't resist, can we? The only way off the merry-go-round is to look for, or perhaps more likely, to create, a different understanding of structures. That's what finally put paid to the idea that if there aren't turtles all the way down, that there must be something else supporting the foundations of the earth. Well, there is, but not another turtle, or Atlas, or whatever. Nor is the earth falling in the sense the Ancient Greek atomists thought. The truth is in an entirely different category - and that's the key.

But if we're willing to allow that we and our language games have causes external to ourselves, then there is no need to question the existence of "facts" that lie outside any specific game. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Or perhaps a functioning brain. — Apustimelogist

That's an interesting suggestion. I'm inclined to accept that there must (!) be an evolutionary explanation for the development of language games, including mathematics and logic. But that seems reductionist. Nonetheless, the brain/evolution idea has the interesting property of setting up a circle of explanation. No beginning and no end, or perhaps a self-sustaining structure.

After all, the absolute view is not reality as set over and against appearances, but rather must itself include all of reality and appearance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

People seldom seem to recognize that appearances are real also (and so are hallucinations and delusions).

When Kripke or Rorty want to appeal to usefulness they have to allow that there is some truth about what is actually useful, and presumably this will be determined by factors outside of any language game. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That seems to be right. But there's that pesky metaphor again. It is almost irresistible. But if we were to describe what we're after in ways like that, they would be part of a language-game, right? So the inside/outside or behind/in front metaphors are seriously unhelpful.

Regardless of which hinge propositions you hold to, if you jump off a building, it seems truth will show up to hit you on the way down. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. There is an alternative model that truth can show up in different ways in apparently incommensurable games. Think of the different conceptions of gravity from Aristotle through Newton to Einstein - and now we have gravitational waves. The same truth is represented in different ways.

The government however doesn't go bankrupt, so they don't care as much. — Lionino

I wouldn't want to comment on the government is Sao Paolo. But, in principle, because they don't go bankrupt (or not often - it does happen, though they don't call it bankruptcy), they can take a long view and persuade/manipulate people into adopting new ways.

even though there is no separate bike lane, cars and buses mostly respect that bikes may ride on the slow rightmost lane. — Lionino

There's nothing like getting the people on your side. Without a doubt, it is the most effective engine for social change.

BTW, I like the new version of your old post. There's one city I can identify as not likely to support cycles - Hong Kong! I have never seen a single one there.

From my experience, bikes are used more in small/concentrated cities than big/spread-out ones. — Lionino

I think you've got a point there. But I always thought that the critical factor was the hills. The Netherlands are flat or nearly so. I'm not sure about Brussels. But the availability of cycle lanes - especially where there is heavy traffic, especially where roads are narrow - is also thought to be persuasive. But it takes time for people to change their ways.

I would suggest the risk of designing your life oblivious to the dangers of lethal moving machines probably influences the over-all attitude toward accommodating cars. — AmadeusD

There's been general acceptance that pedestrians and traffic should be separated as much as possible, and that's common sense now - it has not always been so, and it is still not universal in the UK. There should be even more pressure than there is already to separate pedal cycles from cars and other lethal heavy machinery. That's also just common sense.

But it also doesn't make any sense to mix cycles up with pedestrians (as happens all too often in the UK, now that they have legalized cycles using sidewalks); there are nasty accidents from time to time. (I would do the same for horses.)

At the very least, where mixed traffic is unavoidable, cars, etc. should be limited to walking speed. (I have heard that in Norway, if a car hits a pedestrian anywhere on the public roads, the assumption is that it is the driver's fault. That would help.)

So it's about being in possession of the greatest item or object desirable to society, mostly for superficial reasons, but also supported by the factual beneficial and general status reasons that come with. Isn't it? — Outlander

Yes, but it is also about being able to access opportunities, both work and social, that would not be practicable otherwise. And so you end up with the car being essential to your way of life. `

But also the move to this kind of moralistic framing – motonormativity as the code word for a defective mindset – is a problematic political position. — apokrisis

Well, people do like a moral justification. It is so much nobler than self-interest. But you are right that the politics of this are much more complicated than the pictures show and realism is more helpful.

And the criticism concerning wokeism is that it is a turning of individuals against individuals by harnessing the amplification of social media. — apokrisis

That's odd. I thought it took two to make a fight.
But in this case, the division is even more stupid than usual. People are not divided into two groups - drivers and pedestrians. Sometimes, one drives and sometimes one walks. Other people drive through the place I live in, and I drive through the places they live in. It's not a competition for dominance.
Of course, when I'm driving, I get annoyed at the pedestrians and other cars that are in my way. When I'm walking, I get annoyed at the other pedestrians and cars that get in my way. Somehow, we need to understand ourselves as wanting ideal conditions for both and then we can laugh at ourselves and settle for a tolerable compromise.

Your pictures are powerful arguments. But I do wonder what went into making those changes, in particular, whether the benefits have gone to the people who suffered the costs. There's a tendency for the gentry to move in to areas that are improved in those ways, and for the people who used to live there to be forced to move out.

I now live in rural Kentucky and here things are truly, completely unwalkable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm glad you brought up the issues about rural communities. I've seen quite a lot about re-designing cities, but practically nothing about rural communities. Your description of Kentucky is very reminiscent of many rural areas of the UK, right down to the problems of equine traffic. (No Amish communities, of course, but many riders for leisure and pleasure. Horses and cars, etc. don't mix very well.) You don't mention heavy lorries on your lanes. But I find them more worrying than anything else.

Here in the US, being able to drive is a cultural rite of passage. When I was 16, I got my license on the day after my birthday. The sense of freedom it gives is powerful. Of course, that is partly because getting around without a car is difficult, but still, it's very compelling. — T Clark

I'm sure it is a cultural rite of passage in many other countries as well. It certainly is in the UK.

People are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to maintain personal transport instantly available on demand 24 hours a day and build their lives around it. I don't blame them. True, people do seem to be better able to manage where there is decent public transport. But public transport can't replace the car parked outside your house. So the politics around these schemes, at least in democracies, is much more complicated than people seem to recognize.

I also suspect that population density is indirectly correlated to motonormativity wherever cars are readily available. — Leontiskos

I'm sure there's a tendency for people to choose to live further apart when they have cars. But, if you look at the schemes in the OP, they are all in cities.

This kills public transportation because you need a certain level of density to make light rail, etc. economically viable. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's a vicious circle. Lower density, less public transport, more cars. Moving away from cars in those areas is going to be very difficult indeed. Fewer people in a given area have less political clout.
Of course, it depends on what criteria you have for viability. If you are looking for economic viability, you will have it only in city centres and many people will have to do without, so will not be able to move away from cars.

I remember seeing the casual use of 'car-centric' or variations often. — Lionino

I thought that "car-centric" was the standard word for this.

I'm not sure it is actually self-refuting. If anything it complements itself in a weird way. It would be self-refuting if there was a determinate meaning to the phrase, since it would be its own counterexample.
Hmm, it does seem like a paradox though; maybe the solution to the paradox is the skeptical solution. — Apustimelogist

Well, what I was most interested in was the point that "and hence no way to get outside of language." has no determinate meaning. If that argument fails, I can argue that that particular phrase has no determinate meaning anyway.
But surely, "there is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterance" includes itself in its reference. If it is true, it has no determinate meaning. If it is false, it might have determinate meaning, but that would depend on coming up with the scheme or context that fixes its meaning.

But meaning is determined by context of utterance, etc., That determines meaning to an entirely satisfactory extent and enables us to sort out any issues that arise. So I see Kripke's scepticism as a search for the absolute determinacy of meaning, which is an ideal that, so far as I can see, has no meaning.

The question isn’t whether the sky is blue , as though there were such things as neutral facts whose meaning could be isolated from contexts of use, motive and purpose that define their sense, but why it matters to us and in what context it becomes an issue. — Joshs

I agree with most of that.

I don't believe that for Wittgenstein we ever have access to a world outside discursive practices, which is not the same thing as saying that our discursive practices are hermetically sealed within themselves and closed off to an outside. — Joshs

My impression is that he talks about practices, and never about discursive practices. Perhaps you are thinking of language games as practices. Fair enough. But practices and forms of life are wider concepts than that. That's a crucial part of the point. IMO.

There is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterances, and hence no way to get outside of language. — Joseph Rouse

That's self-refuting. If there is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterance, then the content of this quotation (utterance) is not fixed.
In particular, the phrase "outside of language" has no determinate meaning.

How a theory or practice interprets the world is itself inescapably open to further interpretation, with no authority beyond what gets said by whom, when — Joseph Rouse

Why do we need some authority beyond what gets said by whom, when?

I think that the most important points are:-
1. Language has developed in the world, out of the world, as part of the world.
2. Language is inescapably adapted to the world and our lives in it.
3. Rouse has adopted the theoretical stance towards the world, forgetting or setting aside the inescapable fact that we live and act in it. That's what creates his problem. But language reflects our capabilities and our needs and interests, as you point out in the first quotation above. There would be no point to it if it did not.

We shall see. My understanding is that over the long term, Islamists seek to take over the west. Maybe that's just right wing propaganda. — fishfry

Islam is a missionary religion. It seeks to become the universal religion. The idea of the theocratic Caliphate is an aim that some fundamentalists are committed to. That's true. It's just that I don't think they will succeed. Sadly, they can do a lot of damage while they are trying.

Christianity has the same ambitions. They are not terrorists, of course. Nonetheless, while I respect their right to campaign for their views, I object strongly to their desire to impose their views on me and suppress mine.

So, how many Islamic terror bombings are ok with you? — fishfry

Oh, come on. I think that Islamic fundamentalism is not an existentialist threat to the West. That doesn't mean that terror bombings are ok with me

He puts them in concentration camps in western China. I don't support him in that. I support the plight of the Uyghurs. These are all complicated issues. — fishfry

I agree with you that they are complicated. The desire to suppress IS and similar groups is perfectly reasonable. But the means employed against Uighurs are grossly disproportionate.

You simply need to have the border guards do their jobs instead of telling them not to. — fishfry

You're missing the problem. People who are willing to die to get in to UK or US are very hard to stop. Public opinion won't support extreme measures (which would probably not work anyway)

The Chinese are not US and British domestic terrorists. — fishfry

Strictly speaking, they are not terrorists. But both of them operate in secret in the UK and elsewhere.

I don't have to be ignoring Xi just because I'm opposed to Islamic terrorism. — fishfry

Fair enough.

He's threatened to arrest and extradite Americans for exercising our free speech rights. He can't do that, we have the First Amendment here. He's gone mad as far as I can tell. His double-standard with respect to violent Muslim rioting is obvious. — fishfry

Sorry, I think you are a bit confused. He can arrest and deport (i.e. send back home) US citizens who misbehave. The UK also has free speech, but bans incitement to riot. That seems perfectly reasonable to me. They are lucky that he doesn't apply UK law and throw them in jail.
I haven't seen anything about violent Muslim rioting recently - not in the UK, anyway. Obviously, if no Muslims are rioting, he can't throw them in jail.

The current hordes coming in, in the US and in England, are a matter of government policy. — fishfry

Well, you know best about what's going in the USA. In the UK, the Government has been trying to prevent immigration across the Channel for decades. You would think it was easy enough. But they've failed.

You simply need to have the border guards do their jobs instead of telling them not to. — fishfry

People are who prepared to die to get here are very difficult to stop.

Cheap labor is always popular. But who gets hurt? The people legally here, the natives, who are perhaps in the trades themselves and who can't compete with the cheap labor. — fishfry

Who employs the cheap labour? When those people are not prepared to employ them, the incentive will disappear. That's what I meant about lack of public support. People are happy to make a fuss, but not willing to pay a bit more for labour. You can't have it both ways.

People who speak out against immigration are being thrown in Starmer's prisons. So clearly we are not hearing people's true feelings. — fishfry

You're begging the question. The courts think that those people are rioting, and that's not free speech, it's violence. As for people's true feelings, you seem to trust the Telegraph.
Daily Telegraph Southport Counter-demonstrations

Didn't the Tories just get swept out because they FAILED to deliver on their promise of controlling immigration? — fishfry

Yes, but that was just one aspect of their failure to deliver any public services at all. Health, Education, Justice, Defence, not to mention the housing crisis - the list is endless. Obsessed by in-fighting and tax reduction, failed to do their job.

I think that's overblown too!! — fishfry

I'm very glad to hear it.

Floyd was a violent career criminal who died of a fentanyl overdose. His police force threw him under the bus. That's supported by the facts. — fishfry

I agree it is supported by some of the facts. But surely the police are not supposed to throw people under buses - arrest and fair trial?

I remember also thinking that the Robinson Caruso argument should also apply to all learning, but the idea that it is impossible for an isolated feral human being to learn anything or to ever be wrong about what they think they've learned seems implausible to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The versions of Robinson Crusoe that I've seen have all failed to recognize that he does not have to learn any of the skills of West European society. He arrives with a tool-chest, which he is fully equipped to use. So he knows the rules he needs and what is correct and what is not. Defoe's novel is irrelevant.

Kripke is not even advancing a skeptical position but a nihilist one. He isn't saying facts about meaning are impossible to pin down with certainty, but rather that they don't exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's a while since I've read Kripke's text, but that seems to be right. But it's a bit more complicated than that. If the thesis is that meaning is established by practices, then it does not seem to be wrong to say that there is no fact of the matter that determines it. However, given that the sky is blue, it is true to say that there is a fact of the matter that makes the statement "the sky is blue" true. IMO.

This would seem to offer another way out of the meaning dilemma, since meaning is grounded in the mind's access to the intelligibility of being. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm always uncomfortable with those grand philosophical concepts. But I would agree in many cases that our access to - no, better, our practices in - a world "outside" language does ground meaning. I think the game may be differently played in fields like mathematics and logic - though even there, there are facts that kick us in the face; we are not simply in control.

Yes, I think we are basically in agreement, as far as I can tell! — Apustimelogist

Yes. As Wittgenstein points out, an agreement can break down at any moment!

In PI, Wittgenstein treats intuition as an inner picture one consults: — Joshs

Ok. Thanks for coming back to me and providing the quotations.

However, I understand what's going on here as Wittgenstein considering the idea that intuition is an inner picture that one consults - but rejecting it.

So it must have been intuition that removed this doubt?—If intuition is an inner voice—how do 1 know how I am to obey it? And how do I know that it doesn't mislead me? For if it can guide me right, it can also guide me wrong. ((Intuition an unnecessary shuffle.)) — Wittgenstein Phil. Inv. 213

I think "unnecessary shuffle" dismisses intuition as unhelpful.

I think, however, that he may be a bit harsh. Intuition, for me, is a name for whatever it is that enables us to get things right when we have nothing to go on. If we had to think about continuing from 1000 to 1002, we would get as confused as WIttgenstein outlines in 186. But that doesn't happen. Why? Intuition explains nothing. Drill (learning what to do by repetition) is the explanation. That's the basis of practices.

A side-note. Wittgenstein here seems to me very reminiscent of Hume. You'll remember that, having knocked the traditional idea of hidden "powers" as the explanation for causal chains on the head, he explains that we associate ideas as a result of repetition in our experience and infer from cause to effect, not by rationality, but by "custom" or "habit". In other words, this is what we do and we shall go on doing it even if there is no justification for it. Wittgenstein is subtler than that, because, for him, "This is what I do" defines what is right (and wrong).

So, in one sense Socrates was guilty of impiety, but if being pious requires being just then Socrates, by heeding his daimonion, was just. — Fooloso4

Yes, I'm sure that is what Plato wanted us to draw from the Euthyphro. Though Euthyphro's account of his just action in prosecuting his father seems odd to me. I don't understand it, and I think there's a big metaphor going on there.

One might flee, but there is a lesson here for the next generation of law-makers, — Fooloso4

Yes, the Crito is certainly a warning to law-makers, and enforcers. It does seem a bit odd that Socrates doesn't show any sign of concluding that rebellion against unjust laws is justified. It wasn't till much, much later (I'm not sure when, but at least 1,000 years later) that the doctrine that rebellion against an unjust tyrant was justified was developed.

Yet, should the day come when he knows what “speaking ill” means, his anger will cease; at present he does not know. — Plato, Meno, 94e, translated by Lamb

Yes. Anytus' attitude is still quite common, alas. People hate being corrected. Socrates thinks they should be grateful. That's a nice example of Socrates' total faith in his values and his astonishing naivete in the face of the situation he faced.

It's worth adding that the Phaedo concludes Plato's story. It shows him in his death cell, talking to his friends about the immortality of the soul, and finally drinking the hemlock and dying peacefully after remembering to ask one of his friends - I forget which - to pay Ascelpius the cock he owes him. This amplifies and justifies one of the prominent themes of the Apology, that he does not fear death, because no harm can touch a good person. It is a radical and new thesis in Greek times, and completely counter-intuitive in that culture (and pretty astonishing in this one). Aristotle takes a different view, in the Nicomachaean Ethics.
BTW, if you have not already taken on board that Plato is not writing history, look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning and compare them to the picture he gives us of Socrates' death.

Everything that I say here is from memory. I believe it is true, but it is worth checking in the encyclopedias.

We all know (I guess) that Sokrates was charged with asebia and for corrupting the young.
My question is: why did his accusers (as shown in the title) accuse him. Did he do anything to them? Did he make them lose face? I can't really seem to find a good answer anywhere — NocturnalRuminator

The story of his divine mission in Plato's Apology and the reaction of people whose ignorance he exposed is, presumably, meant to refute the charge of asebeia. Despite much experience, he never worked out that people get very cross when their ignorance is exposed. Poor misunderstood Socrates!

I realize that you haven't much time. But you should try to get a look at Xenophon's version of his defence - also called Apology - and Aristophanes' play The Clouds. See Perseus Digital Library. These views will also be partial, but they at least offer an alternative to Plato's hagiography.

Something I'd like to add: Why was it necessary to sentence a, then 70 year old man, to death just a couple of years before he would've probably died anyway? — NocturnalRuminator

That suggests that it wasn't just about what he did - his mission. It must have been about something that was going on at the time.

1. Aristophanes' Clouds lampoons "the sophists" but takes Socrates as a paradigm sophist (!). Plato, of course, is at great pains to distinguish Socrates from sophists. They do seem to have been very unpopular. No doubt because they trained most of the politicians who led them to defeat in the war with Sparta.

2. In 403 BCE, Athens lost her war against Sparta and was occupied; the Spartans installed a puppet right-wing regime. In 401 BCE, they were killed or driven out. You can imagine that right-wing, mostly aristocratic, anti-democratic people were not in good odour. Plato, Xenophon and many of that circle were aristocrats and anti-democrats. Is it surprising that Socrates was seen in that context?

(Alcibiades was also part of that group, though perhaps in the younger set. You should look him up (Wikipedia again) to see why he was so desperately unpopular at that time. Hence the charge of corrupting the youth. His defence doesn't address the issue and plays games with the definition of "corrupt". )

3. Almost the only feature of Plato's account that I take more or less seriously is his answer to the question why he refused to take advantage of the ways to game the system and escape death. It is helpful to look at the Crito for that.
A. If you look at Socrates' biography, will see, I think, someone who respected the law and the status quo and had no intention of undermining it.
B. His mission kept him in Athens, and there's little doubt that if he tried the same thing in other cities, he would meet the same fate.
C. He argues, very plausibly in my view, that life as an exile would not be worth living.

Xenophon reports that Socrates was afraid of old age. That is a bit odd. 70 years was definitely old age in that time. Perhaps it was more that he was feeling his age.

Quite simply, they are censors. They’ll abuse power to silence views they do not like. — NOS4A2

Is there any group in power who doesn't?

Well he uses the word himself! — Apustimelogist

So he does. I had forgotten. I'll have to take it up with him directly.

That may be a good example; but I was more thinking that with "pointing" at something, it is similarly somewhat underdetermined what is being pointed at, so pointing is also "blind" in that sense. — Apustimelogist

That's also a bit of a problem. I think part of what's confusing me is that there are several issues here. At first sight, you seem to be referring to the point that Wittgenstein concedes and solves when he points out that my audience needs to know the "station" of the word in the language-game - whether I'm pointing at the colour, the shape, etc. I agree that my intention is not a solution, since the definition can only work if there is agreement about that. Then there's the complexity about applying the definition in practice, which is resolved if I have learnt how to play the language game. Ostensive definition can only work if both I and my audience have learnt the skills/practices that are needed. Even then, there can be disagreements. But we know how to detect and how to work with those.

Yes, this is part of the skeptical solution albeit I would say it doesn't actually solve indeterminacy, just is used as a way of explaining how coherent word-use emerges. — Apustimelogist

Well, if your idea of a solution is a magic bullet that abolishes indeterminacy, there can't be one. But being able to use the words (and deal with what they refer to or are true of) is all the solution that matters, isn't it. (Scepticism as bogey-man.)

I'm afraid I couldn't detect how what you said was a deconstruction. There must be something earlier that I missed or have forgotten. Can you explain or refer to your explanation?
— Ludwig V
I discussed it here: — Joshs

I read your discussion. I think I agree with it. It doesn't mention (or use) the word "intuition", so I'm no further forward in understanding how that concept comes to be a part of Wittgenstein's deconstruction. I must have missed something.

Yes but then there is the opposite perspective on these things where someone might say that we do not act blindly. — Apustimelogist

I suppose so. But "act blindly" suggests that you think that it is possible for them not to act blindly, which I think is incompatible with Wittgenstein's arguments.

And the reference in ostensive definition is equally indeterminate!? — Apustimelogist

I suppose you are referring to Wittgenstein's point that many algorithms are compatible with any finite series of numbers. That sounds like indeterminacy or at least underdeterminacy. But that doesn't mean there is no criterion for correct and incorrect applications (and for which cases are problematic). That's what the practice is for. So the rule is determined as it is applied.

The better starting point is not necessarily the classics. — Tarskian

Well, you seem to be accepting that the classics (or at least some of them) are a starting-point.

For me, the best starting-point is whatever turns you on, or annoys but haunts you - classic or not. It doesn't matter. Once you start philosophizing you will need to engage with other philosophers. It won't be long before talking to them will drive you to something that is canonical, because those are the reference points of the discussion - even if they are wrong - no, that's wrong - especially when they are wrong.

I don't know if Popper overturned everything that went before. Was there even anything that went before, so to speak of? — Tarskian

So when you cite Popper, you do not think that his text is a classic. But what you say about it tells me that you think it is a classic, or at least ought to be a classic.
But that argument doesn't show that history is unimportant, even if it is bunk. He was writing in the immediate context of his contemporaries - Marx, Adler and Freud. But they were writing in their historical context (though how far it was philosophical I do not know) and in his own wider context of what passed for the philosophy of science in his day, especially Hume's account of induction and ideas about logic and proof - again, I don't know exactly what his reference points were, but I'm quite sure he had some.
He undoubtedly was the originator of new ideas about science. Many people have criticized or amended them since he wrote - and I'm sure that there will be a continuing thread of writing about him - though you can never tell. Certainly, for many people he is canonical, including, I think, you.

The other point I would definitely include is ‘some reference to the canonical texts of the philosophical tradition’. This thread, for instance, contains none. — Wayfarer

Yes, the tradition is important. The hard part is determining which parts to privilege and study. — Tom Storm

That is indeed a big problem. In practice, you will find yourself looking at the philosophical canon. Those books will at least make it much easier to talk to other philosophers.

The concept may be unfamiliar, so here is a reasonably authoritative explanation:-

The literary canon, theorists contend, is a selection of reputable works that abstracts their value for specific purposes: to safeguard them from neglect or censure, reproduce social and institutional values, maintain them as exemplary in the formation of personal or communal identities, or objectify and enshrine standards of judgment. .... The discourse of canonicity thus relies on an economy of belief about the possibility and validity of agreement about literary value. Within this economy, the canon, in whichever composition, is both the evidence and the outcome of agreement, without which value would seemingly become entirely speculative. ..... A work may be treated as a reference point, a familiar and influential text whose contribution to culture is measured relative to one context. — Canon and Classic | Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature

The link is here

And there's always the nagging feeling that there may well have been one or two thinkers along the way who might have allowed us to dispense with some of what came before them. — Tom Storm

Oh, that is a big problem, which is exacerbated by the academic idea that you have to read everything in order to understand anything. In practice, people read the stuff that the people they are talking to read. Going beyond that is pretty much a question of happenstance (or, these days, what comes up in the first page or two of a web search). But that's all right. Sometimes, you find something new and interesting.

It is naïve to believe that by merely studying the old masters, you will be able to make a relevant contribution to the world of philosophy as it exists today. Instead, you will find yourself mostly divorced from the contemporary discourse. — Tarskian

That opinion depends on which parts of contemporary discourse you happen to be reading. There is a good deal of contemporary discourse about a good many of the old masters. Collectively, they set the context of contemporary discussion. Every few years, someone comes along who thinks they have overturned everything that went before. Its part of the tradition. It never works. At best, the revolutionaries add a new strand to the complex web that we know and, sometimes, love.

For example, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a long-winding text that rarely commits to anything actionable, but when it very occasionally does, it turns out to be wrong. — Tarskian

Of course he gets things wrong. Everyone gets things wrong. But Kant gets thing wrong in interesting ways. That's what keeps philosophy going.

That is why I have personally never treated and will never treat philosophy or mathematics as more than just hobbies. — Tarskian

Simple definitions. Work is what you have to do. Hobbies are what make life worth living.

No, I’m not positing individual intuition, I’m trying to show how Wittgenstein deconstructs the idea. I should add that Wittgenstein was no behaviorist, and training into following a rule involves more than reinforcement contingencies, it requires understanding the relevance of the rule, what is at stake in following it. — Joshs

I'm afraid I couldn't detect how what you said was a deconstruction. There must be something earlier that I missed or have forgotten. Can you explain or refer to your explanation?
I know that Wittgenstein was no behaviourist. I know that he walks a perilous path between behaviourism and traditional dualism. I was trying to gesture at a very rough idea of how we might acquire understanding in terms of learning skills.

Apparently the Vienna Circle read TLP aloud to one another and members got so fed up with it that they began screaming "metaphysics!" at certain lines. Which, given their views, amounted to yelling out "bullshit!" — Count Timothy von Icarus

If they were so fed up with it, why did they read it to each other? The obvious answer must be that they enjoyed hearing the text and jeering at the lines they didn't like - as a community.
Doesn't he say somewhere that the question how you establish truth and falsity is an important one, but not the only one? It's more like putting logical positivism in its place than outright rejection.

Not at all. Acting blindly is primary. — Apustimelogist

I guess you mean "This is what I do!", and that's fine. I'm just not happy with describing that as "acting blindly". That phrase suggests that it is possible that I could act not blindly. I think that "This is what I do!" is, essentially, an ostensive definition, so neither blind nor not blind.

There is no good presenting another picture because prior assumptions are required, — Apustimelogist

That's how a philosopher pursuing theory would put it. I think that Wittgenstein does not posit assumptions, but skills - practices.

If it applies to those things then surely, the skeptical solution also applies. — Apustimelogist

Sorry - what is the sceptical solution?

Is an intuition a robustly persistent interpretive content of meaning that we can consult again and again to tell us how to follow a rule? Is an intuition an internal cognition as opposed to a socially discursive practice? — Joshs

Because its just acting blindly, and "social discursive practise" is just an extension of that involving many individuals. — Apustimelogist

You both seem to me to have got this the wrong way round. You are positing the individual's interpretation of the rule as primary. But we can only interpret rules because we have learnt to do so - from other people. No doubt it is a complex process, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that it is develops by trial (responses of whatever kind) and error, coupled with positive and negative reinforcement. Once we have learnt, we can do it on our own. Our intuitions are, if you like, a kind of summary of what we have learnt - not purely in words, but in actions.

A picture of meaning would present a determinate , "objective" view of things; but the point is that no such thing can be presented to us. — Apustimelogist

I have no idea what a determinate objective view might be. But I thought the impossibility of a picture of meaning (or even an explanation of it) was quite different from that. I thought the point was that there could not be a picture of how a picture relates to the world. If you can't grasp the relationship between a picture and what it is a picture of, it will be no good presenting you with another picture to explain. You'll have to do something different. Similarly, when someone doesn't "get" the idea of explanation of meaning, there's no point in trying to explain what it is, for the same reason. It's like not "getting" a joke.

Though academic education is not enough, it is definitely necessary. There are too many academics, especially in the biological sciences, who don't even know how to write properly. I wouldn't call them scientists however, merely researchers or heuretics. — Lionino

Well, I agree that people who intend to write stuff for publishing should learn how to write - and I don't mean just inscribing letters on paper. That's should be expected in addition to academic expertise. I don't know about the Aufklarer, specifically whether they thought that Enlightenment was for everyone. But if they did - and I hope they did - then there is a question how much academic education they expected the person in the street to acquire.

Zakaat is in principle not enforced by government (even though in some countries it loosely is) but by religious self-discipline. If you don't want to do it, then you obviously don't. However, it is inculcated from a young age that it is a moral obligation, surrounded by quite a bit of social pressure. — Tarskian

H'm. Then it seems to be somewhere in between a tax and a charity.

Yes. I'm afraid it's a pipe dream. The Happiness indexes are a step in the right direction.

The Muslims have a bad track record. The religion and state are intertwined. They are fundamentally incompatible with western thought. Many integrate very successfully. I'm for human movement. Governments should set and enforce their own laws, not have open borders like the US and western Europe. — fishfry

I agree that things are different in the Middle East. But religion and state are also intertwined in the West. The relationship works differently, that's all.

Some say that the open-mindedness and acceptance of the West is exactly why they will be conquered by the East. I'm not wise enough to know. But it's a possibility. You see the liberals in cities voting in soft-on-crime prosecutors, then being overwhelmed by the crime they voted for. Islam does no seek to coexist. It seeks to conquer. I believe this is just how it is. Am I wrong? — fishfry

I think you are paying to much attention to the fundamentalists - who are a problem, but not an existential threat, I think. The biggest threat is not from Islam, but from Putin and Xi Jinping. Putin is (officially) Christian and Xi Jinping (officially) communist. Both are actually old-fashioned imperialists, just like the West was in the 19th and early 20th century.
I don't know for sure who will win. But I think the West has a very good chance.

I did no understand what you are referring to. I just meant the political threads over at the Lounge. — fishfry

OK. I took it that you were referring to all the threads. Sorry.

I happened to see a picture the other day of Keir Starmer taking the knee during the George Floyd protests. So when liberals are burning down the country, he supports them. And when people get angry that thee children were slaughtered, he comes out four square against the protesters. Never mind the stabbers. — fishfry

Are you sure it is not a fake?
Taking the knee is not the same thing as burning down the country. You can't infer from the fact that he takes the knee against racism (or even against what happened to George Floyd), that he doesn't oppose burning down the country.

It's the taking sides that's blatant here. Starmer took a knee for the American BLM/Antifa riots, and his police stand down in the face of violent Muslim extremists; then call out the dogs, running courts 24/7 to arrest and convict and imprison anyone who expresses a word of dissent. — fishfry

I haven't heard/seen any reports of any violent Muslim extremists.

Cheap labor is always good for business. Cheap labor that can't complain about exploitation, lack of safety, and being cheated, because they are illegal, is even better! There are many powerful interests perfectly happy with the corrupt and immoral system we have now. But at some point, when you have imported the Third World into your formerly First World country ... how do you think that's going to work out for you? You have to set some limits, you have to have some laws that you are willing to enforce, you have to try to reduce the corruption and brutality and evil in the system. — fishfry

Yes. I broadly agree with that.

I'm for serious immigration reform in the US, whatever that may look like. — fishfry

The issue is that you can't enforce immigration laws unless most ordinary citizens will help you. Most ordinary people in the UK (and, so far as I can see, the US) will not (or perhaps cannot) help enforce the rules. It does mean something much more like a police state than we are happy to live with. But you can't have it both ways.
I remember, back when UK was in the EU that the middle class (not just the rich) were delighted with the cheap Polish plumbers and builders that they could employ. UK plumbers and builders were somewhat less enthusiastic. Now, plumbing and building are much more expensive and difficult to get done. Again, after COVID there was a serious shortage of HGV drivers which resulted in rapid increases in transportation costs (and delays in supply chains). Manufacturers and customers alike were very unhappy. HGV drivers were too busy making lots of money by driving to tell anyone how happy they were. Nobody thinks about how things affect other people.
You can't expect to tell the world how well you are doing economically and expect people who have no prospects where they are not to come and join in the feast. The root cause of immigration, legal and illegal, is the unequal distribution of wealth across the world. The only way to stop it is to make sure that international trade benefits everyone.

I have been following this, it's really blowing up. Starmer is cracking down hard and calling them right wingers, but they're mostly working class folk whose lives are being impacted by immigration promoted by the government, despite the will of the people. — fishfry

I think it became very clear during the last few days what the people think, don't you?

I'm hearing talk of a "civil war" in Britain, but I can't tell if this is overblown or not. — fishfry

It is indeed grossly over-blown.
I hear a lot about the possibility of civil war in the US. What do you think?

Who exactly are the people who "deliberately spread disinformation and provoke violence?" How do you know who they are? .... Twenty people died. There were two billion dollars in property damage. George Floyd was a violent career criminal who died of a fentanyl overdose. That doesn't make the cop officer of the year. But if all you know is the mainstream account, it's all a lie. The cop was following department protocol. His knee was on Floyd's upper back. Floyd did not die from strangulation, he died of an overdose. The police department threw Chauvin, the cop, under the bus and let him take the fall. — fishfry

Yes, I know that what happened to George Floyd was contested and I don't really know what the truth of the matter was. How do you know that the mainstream account is all a lie? Everyone lies, not just the Government.

Profit and "positivity" are perfectly aligned in crisis, which is why the rich get richer in every crisis. Alignment doesn't resolve anything. — Benkei

I'm sorry. I wasn't clear enough about what I meant by "profit" and "positivity". Alignment doesn't, of itself, resolve anything. The issue is what alignment will produce correct results. Note the the alignment is produced by how you define profit and how you define positivity. (Both of the concepts are, of course, value-based).
As they are conventionally defined, the search for "profit" is defined in such a way that it tends to produce results that are, from one perspective, positive, but are negative (not positive) from other perspectives. The depth of this problem is clear when we remember that money is only worth what you can do with it. I'm sure there are many places that make the point, but I like this one:-

...that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts . . . . the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. — Robert F. Kennedy, Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

In order to improve matters, we just need to make sure that profit is defined in such a way that maximizing profit also maximizes the things that make life worth-while.

BTW, I think, if you look more closely, that in a crisis, some rich people will make money, but not all of them. I agree, though, that turning a profit in a famine seems like an unacceptably callous thing to do.

His argument is valid because, whether he realises it or not, its based upon some assumed values. If you value everyone equally then his argument is pretty good (outside of the faults I already mentioned). However, if you dont have that value then his argument simply doesnt apply to you. Values are perspective based, and so the conclusions of moral arguments are aswell. This is true whether or not he personally thinks of his argument this way, I dont know his position nor care. — Ourora Aureis

Of course, if you reject a key premiss of the argument, you will reject it, on the grounds that it is unsound, rather than invalid. I get that.
But I don't reject that premiss. I think that it is badly formulated and wrong for that reason. I'm not sure whether that means the argument is invalid or unsound and that's a secondary issue. But I expect you won't care about that.

quote="Count Timothy von Icarus;917606"]There is a sort of reverse collective action problem here (I am blanking on the proper term). The argument might work for an individual or family. It can't work for everyone. If everyone stops all "unnecessary" economic activity in the developed world those economies will collapse, massively affecting global trade, agricultural production, vaccine production and development, etc. This would probably also reduce global stability and security. And then this would probably have a net negative impact on the developing world, both in the short and long term[/quote]
So the term you are looking for might be "negative feed-back cycle", perhaps?

You say that as if it's a bad thing. All the positive things modern societies can produce are already largely displaced by economic activity that is deemed more profitable (vaccines vs. erection pills, ending world hunger vs. over-processed foods, etc. etc.). — Benkei

There's no easy answer to this. There's no difficult answer either. But it is clear where we need to look. Start with the difference between "the positive things that modern societies can do" and "economic activity that is deemed more profitable". You "deemed" identifies the problem, or part of the problem. One can recognize that positive activity may not be profitable. But one can also recognize that making a profit can also be positive.
The misalignment bites because money is not just an accounting measure, but a proxy for resources. Whoever controls money, controls resources. If the profit and positivity were aligned properly, our resources could be directed properly . See, for example Happiness index - Wikipedia

This is not a perfect definition of the problem, but it is a start.

‘Even if we act to erase material poverty,’ Kennedy said, ‘there is another greater task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction….. that afflicts us all.’ Americans have given themselves over to ‘the mere accumulation of things.’
‘Our Gross National Product now is over 800 billion dollars a year. But that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts . . . . the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud to be Americans.’ — Robert F. Kennedy, Remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968

it is a simple practical fact of life: actual Chinese people share core experiences that you don't. — Lionino

I know what you mean. You seem to be very fond of the practical in life. So am I. Sometimes. But here I'm interested in the philosophical implications of what you say.

In recent years P.P. models have moved closer to fully embodied 4EA approaches in recognizing the inseparable reciprocity of interaction between brain, body and environment. — Joshs

I'm not sure what 4EA approaches are, but I'm fully in sympathy with the recognition that everything interacts. It is perfectly clear that the brain is deeply integrated into all the physical processes of the body, which itself interacts constantly with the "outside" world. I'm a bit cautious about the implications of listing brain, body and mind. It seems to me to be as peculiar as "She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan chair". Perhaps I'm just a bit paranoid about dualism and reductionism.

and yet, you will never know how it is to be Chinese, because you were not raised in China, it wasn't the culture within which you learned about the world, you didn't attend Chinese middle school and your first friends weren't Chinese. — Lionino

If one accepts the interpretation of what it is to know something implicit in this claim, you are right. But trivially so. I see this as a variation of argument like "Mary's Room" and "What it is like to be a bat?" It is true that most people think there is something special about one's "mother tongue", one's upbringing and education. There is. But I don't think anything follows that is relevant here.

Here's my contention:That someone is following a rule is shown by what they do. — Banno

That seems obvious. However, I think one should respond to scepticism, whether of the kind Wittgensteing discusses or the points made under the heading underdetermination by adding: -
1 However, it may be necessary any characterization of what the rule is by amending, or, sometimes, replacing it when disagreements arise about how to apply the rule in specific cases.
2 There is also a practice of, let me call it, characterization of rules. Mostly, we agree about how to apply a rule to each case, but, from time to time, it may be the case that not everyone agrees about the application of a rule to a specific case, and in these cases, we may wish to revisit the characterization that has been applied so far. I don't think this implies any specific disagreement about what Wittgenstein says. It's just that he doesn't consider this possibility, since in the PI it is the principle that agreement underpins application of the rule that matters. We should understand disagreements that occur in practice need to be resolved within that framework. That's the critical bit of his discussion and the reason why general scepticism is not appropriate.

Of course not. But if one wants to explain why we don't confuse them one has to move from the vague metaphor to something more concrete. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's right. Apply the metaphor to games. Asked about why any two games are both games, and we can give quite precise answers from the range of possible criteria. For example, there is, or used to be, some controversy about whether viruses could be considered to be alive, because they are incapable of independent reproduction. They have to hi-jack the reproductive machinery of a cell in order to replicate. That debate seems to have been settled now, but the issue is quite well focused. (Of course, there's another "vague" issue buried in it, because which systems of reproduction count as independent needs to be clarified. But again, that's not a particularly vague issue)
Actually, in the case of the fossil, the issue is quite clear. The fossil does not have any of the functions of a living organism even though the fossil, we might say, used to be a living organism. We also know exactly why a mummified body is not a living organism.

I try doing it over there but to no avail. May have to let it all go. — fishfry

I started on this caper two years ago. I've found that there is some fun and instruction to be found, provided one understands how the game is played and doesn't take it too seriously. But every so often, one finds a more constructive engagement. It doesn't necessarily last forever. So it is important to recognize when one can go no further.

If you don't deny the righteous anger, Keir Starmer might not be pleased! You are NOT ALLOWED to be angry at the fatal stabbing of three little girls at a Taylor Swift dance class. If you are angry at the stabber, you are a right winger. This is the official policy of your government as far as I can tell. — fishfry

OK. There are many environments in which I don't make that point. However, I don't think that one can simply let anger rip. My main reason is pragmatic. It so easily feeds on itself and becomes destructive. It is important to be sure that one has the right target. But the worst effect is that it can so easily provoke a response in kind and a spiral of violence.

Yes well these things do tend to escalate. — fishfry

That's the reason that Governments and similar authorities get so exercised about it. They need to stay in control, and not just because they are taking sides. (Though there is an element of that, of course.)

So why allow people into the country who may harbor ancient ethnic or religious grudges? I'm not arguing that but it's an argument put forth by the protesters. And frankly it's not a bad question. — fishfry

Good question. It is true that it not wise to ask it in many environments. It does have some traction, though it is more complicated than it seems. (This is a different issue, though it is tangled up in the Southport business,)
How would you feel if the UK banned immigration from the USA because there are white supremacists there? Over-reaction, I think. One has to try and weed them out. Same for Muslim fundamentalists. In the UK, there is a lot going on to try to do that - most of it secret, so it is hard to know.

Here's a couple of politically incorrect thoughts of my own.
1. I would not be happy to live in Cairo or Dubai. I've been there, though not lived there. So I would not be happy if those social and religious norms were imported to the UK. Same for many other countries. There is a fear that a substantial minority arriving in the UK will introduce ideas and practices that I don't like. I expect people coming to live here to assimilate.
But there are also ideas and practices in the UK that I don't like. So it's a question of balance - accommodating new ideas and practices and assimilating to what already exists here. It's not a black-and-white question. (Actually new ideas and practices are often harmless or even beneficial. Moreover, societies do better if they are willing to change and adapt.)

2. Then there's the question of economic impact. There is an opinion, here, at least, that immigration drives wages down by increasing the supply of labour. No-one wants to end up with third world conditions in their own country (though they're quite happy to take the benefit of cheap imports). Economists insist that's not the case. I don't know the truth of it, the claim that it makes no difference seems implausible to me. There's also an argument that the UK benefits because immigrants also contribute to the economy. Which is true, so far as it goes.
I don't know the answer, but I'm inclined to think that, again, it's a question of balance. It may seem feeble, so I should emphasize that I'm very happy to rigorously exclude people who are going to deliberately spread disinformation and provoke violence, for the same reason that when UK citizens do those things, they should be repressed.

Chance and necessity, flux and stasis, are various ways of saying the same thing, capturing the same systems logic, that should be familiar from Greek metaphysics. — apokrisis

Well, the idea of interactive binary and contradictory oppositions is fairly familiar. Is it descended from the idea of dialectic? Are you saying that each term is relative to the other? In the examples you cite, that would seem to be right. But you can't mean that all systems have just two elements, surely?

Its systems science. A system is the hierarchical story of top-down constraints shaping local degrees of freedom, and those local degrees in turn acting bottom-up to (re)construct the globally prevailing state of constraint. So in Peircean jargon, the continuity of global lawful synechism and the discreteness of local tychism or chance events. — apokrisis

I'm not sure that there are not other kinds of system as well, where elements interact neither top/down nor bottom/up, but neighbour/neighbour. How does this connect to Wittgenstein?

Actually, I meant "is." A fossil bears a close resemblance to the organism it is a fossil of. This could be considered a "family resemblance" in the metaphorical sense, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, of course you're right. It's just that that it isn't like the resemblances between one dog and another, but between a dog and a sculpture of it. We wouldn't confuse a fossil with a living member of the species, would we?

Right, well, this is precisely what my comment was on. Wittgenstein knows he is being vague. He calls himself out on it. And he seems to say "yup, but what can you do?" Well, I think we can do better. If you're vague enough, you can avoid ever being "wrong" (a plus I suppose), but potentially at the cost of triviality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, you're right. Vagueness is not necessarily OK. But I think that W has a point if he's saying that sometimes it is all you've got.
More seriously, isn't one of his targets the idea that language is a single, coherent system? There's that quotation comparing language to an old city, with an ancient mess in the middle and the regulated, systematic laying out of the suburbs. One pattern doesn't fit all here. If you reorganized your city to a single system of grids, you would have not just reorganized, but rebuilt, the city.

Though I disagree, my original remark was not philosophical, it was general. This thread itself is not even philosophical. At most, it is a very low-quality attempt at prescriptive grammar. — Lionino

Yes, indeed. :smile:

It is only by misinterpreting the text, by assuming that the other person is saying something absurd rather than something obvious, fueled by the desire for polemics, that we then enable criticism in something otherwise uncontroversial. — Lionino

That can happen. So it seems a good idea, before embarking on any criticism, to confirm that one's speculations or assumptions are correct or not. No?

Some things are not up to be criticised because they are evidently correct. ..... In Italy they would just acquiesce and carry on with the conversation, — Lionino

Do you never find that something you thought was evidently correct, isn't?
A wild speculation.
Some UK, or at least English-speaking philosophers, especially analytic ones, express disagreement, not by saying "You are talking rubbish" or even "I disagree with you" or even "Why do you believe that", but by saying "I can't understand why you think that.." It's just a politeness - disagreeing without raising the emotional temperature. Perhaps things are not the same in Italy and when you disagree, you say so more plainly.

In this case, what is self-evident to you is not at all self-evident to me. It is a trivial disagreement, since it depends on which criterion you choose to apply count as English or Italian word. Our disagreement is incidental and I didn't intend to provoke a great discussion about it. But perhaps you'll allow me to state my view and then we can leave it at that - agreeing to disagree.

It is true that sometimes similar words and terms are found in different languages, as with "democracy", "'democrazia", "demokratie", "demokracja", "democracia". If "'democrazia" is not an Italian word and not an English word, which language does it belong to? I think you must mean that it is a Greek word. (You'll let me know if that assumption is wrong, I'm sure).
Well, it is not self-evident to me that a word can only ever belong to the language it originally belonged to. If it is meaningful in more than one language, it belongs to all the languages in which it is meaningful. In fact, so this word was originally Greek, but, in various forms (I'll spare you the argument about that) it is now a word in English, Italian, German, Polish and Spanish amongst other languages.

I think it is true of all languages and it is certainly true of English that many words are imported from other languages. Sometimes they remain identifiable as importations, but in many cases they are absorbed. That boundary is pretty uncertain, but I'm not aware that any significant philosophical issues hang on the distinction, so I'm not inclined to worry about it.

For example, in the following article, they develop a definition for the human face. It is contained in the configuration file haarcascade_frontalface_default.xml . It allows them to do the folllowing: — Tarskian

Sorry, I put my point badly. The definition is being developed by the people, and applied by the machine. So whatever your philosophical machine can do, it is not defining philosophy, but applying a definition of philosophy to the tedious task of distinguishing philosophy texts from other kinds of text.

(please no solipsism argument here for this conversation hinges on behaviour correctly reflecting mental states). — Lionino

I believe that it is not appropriate behaviour to base an argument on a philosophical doctrine that I do not believe. "If P then Q" is not a sound argument if P is false. But I have seen people attempt that tactic. (I suspect that, in truth, they are just trying to change the subject.)

Narcissistic psychopaths, specially when untreated, are not quite able to experience love (please no solipsism argument here for this conversation hinges on behaviour correctly reflecting mental states). — Lionino

I don't know what your training or background may be, but I'm inclined to think that one needs better information before beginning to pin psychiatric diagnoses on people based on the kind of information we have about both Kant and Mill.

Likewise, there may be a set of psychological traits that may make someone anxious about the fluid and uncertain nature of what constitutes good behaviour. Because of that, they may invent a set of rigid rules to make up for that. I think that, unfortunately, that misses the very nature of good behaviour, which is ethics. — Lionino

. There is plausibility in the idea that personality traits may influence the philosophical doctrines that people sign up to. But that does not mean that the position that they sign up to is not sound.
I suppose you understand that your argument here might count under the tactic of giving a dog a bad name.
I have no trouble agreeing with you that ethics and morality are not a matter of a set of rigid rules, though rules of thumb may be helpful.

I just think that whatever psychological difficulties or abnormalities Kant and Mill might have laboured under, the theories they propound deserve serious consideration in their own right. If nothing else, it would be a bit over the top, wouldn't it, to surmise that all the people who have accepted their theories would also register on the autism spectrum - unless there's some evidence (apart from their accepting Kant/Mill's theories)

All of this originally came up as a remark that the definition for"philosophy" does not need to be computable any more than the definition for "dog" needs to be. — Tarskian

Your project, as far as I understand it, is to develop a machine that can tell the difference between philosophical sentences/statements and other things. I've pointed out that a definition of philosophy may be required for the project, what you describe does not provide it, but rather depends on it.

You may simply have to assume that the promotor of this project knows what he is doing. I don't know anything about dog behaviour, but I would just assume that the project owner does. Since someone else at the Ministry of Health is also willing to pay for the project owner's mistakes, I would give him the benefit of the doubt. — Tarskian

The person in charge of the project to enable machines to identify behavioural and health problems in dogs may well know what they are doing. But they are not developing a definition of "dog".
I can't tell whether you know what you are doing. But it doesn't look good.

Hence, concerning your question, "How is this the relevant to philosophy in any way?", there is your answer, and it is called, "Computational philosophy". It is actually a gigantic subdiscipline. — Tarskian

Well, of course there's a lot of literature and a lot of enthusiasm. Computing is very fashionable. And delegating philosophy to computers might save a lot of wasted time - or be a lot of wasted time. I agree that it is entirely appropriate that the possible applications of computing should be thoroughly explored. But books that you so kindly list for us don't seem likely to provide a definition of philosophy.

You said this on the private thread:-

Compassion to the criminals is anti-compassion to their victims. Compassion for the homeless drug addicts is anti-compassion for the decent citizens who have to live in the city. — fishfry

Yes, I take your point. Really, I do. I don't know how to open up a discussion about this without seeming to trigger the righteous anger, not only of victims, but of many decent citizens as well.
There are issues that need to be recognized, and I hope that you will be able to see them. I do not mean to deny righteous anger, which is expressed in the desire for revenge and to exclude the offender from one's society.
First, there is the familiar problem of the cycle of revenge - the blood feud, continuing a cycle of violence which can even be inherited for generations. It is the result of what is often forgotten, that what we think of as punishment may not be "accepted" by the criminal, who then gets angry and seeks revenge in turn.
Second, there is the issue of proportionate revenge. The traditional "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is an early attempt to limit the revenge response, which can easily go way beyond what is reasonable.
Third, handling the revenge response is not the only issue when a crime is committed. There is the question of prevention and the question of what happens after revenge is exacted. This is where the issues arise. But let's pause there and see how far we agree thus far.

Or perhaps I should start another thread?