> En réponse à Philippe Caquant :
>
>
> >I can't see that philosophical or religious
> >speculation brings us any progress into knowledge or
> >living conditions.
>
> Then go back to your cave and don't even think of painting the walls with
> handprints and animals! :))) . You have a completely incorrect idea of what
> philosophical speculation is.
>
> > We might say that scientific
> >speculation does.
>
> Scientific speculation is rooted in philosophical speculation! There's a
> reason the first scientists were all philosphers! Without philopsophy, we
> wouldn't have science, we wouldn't have education, and as Ray said, we
> would still be hunter-gatherers (maybe not a bad state when you don't know
> anything else, but I still prefer how I live now :)) ).
>
> > I'm thinking of people like
> >Archimedes, Newton or Einstein.
>
> Newton was very much a philosopher. His scientific work is just a small bit
> of everything he wrote. People who dismiss philosophy as ludicrous often
> forget that.
>
> Something else is that science doesn't bring you ethics. And science
> without ethics is one of the most dangerous weapons we have. Only
> philosophy or religion can bring you a sense of ethics, and I prefer
> philosophy in this case, because it asks the individual to look for those
> ethics himself, rather than impose on him the ethics of someone else. So in
> this case, philosophy is extremely important and useful, and I wish it was
> more commonly taught.
>
> Also, philosophy is not about reading others and take what they wrote for
> granted. It's about thinking for yourself and take responsibility for those
> thoughts and their consequences, it's about developing your view of the
> world in a reasonable and well-thought manner, rather than just sit there
> and go with the flow without even considering what you're doing. In other
> words, it's about living as an adult, rather than a child who lets others
> take decisions for him.
>
> Another thing: if it wasn't for some people "losing their time" with
> ludicrous philosophy, we wouldn't have democracy nor human rights. What did
> you say about philosophy being useless?
>
> > But this I think can
> >only be a special kind of knowledge, the one our brain
> >can conceive. Our brain is not fit for certain tasks,
> >just as our eyes are not fit to perceive infra-red, or
> >X-rays, or other wavelengths. We can make tools to
> >improve perception, but what tool could be make to be
> >more clever ?
>
> Just the same as we can make our body stronger than it originally is
> through sports. Just as our body is capable of things we would often find
> extraordinary, our mind is capable of extraordinary things, given the right
> training. Even a genius like Einstein wouldn't have done what he did
> without a bit of training of his mind first.
>
> Philosophy is the sports of the mind. Just like doctors will tell you that
> a bit of sports is good for your body health (despite the fact that sports
> is just a waste of time, isn't it? ;) ), philosophy is necessary for the
> mind's health, for helping it to open itself to wider ranges of knowledge
> and interest. The brains is a tool that breaks only when you don't use it.
>
> > How could we conceive something that
> >would conceive things that we cannot conceive
> >ourselves ? Looks hard.
>
> Actually, not that hard. You seem to have an extremely strict idea of what
> the human mind can do. Because you can't conceive something doesn't mean
> your mind is made in a way that it can't ever conceive it. You may after
> all think you'll never be able to carry something heavier than 50kg (just
> an example. Take your personal limit instead), but with the right training,
> it is a limit easy to break (other humans have carried much more than that,
> so there's no reason you shouldn't be able to, unless specific condition).
> The same is true with the mind: you can train it to open itself to things
> that it couldn't conceive earlier (do you think people in the Middle Ages
> could have conceived things like computers, like the Internet, like the
> nuclear bomb? No they couldn't, because they lacked the right training).
> The limits of our mind are far further than you think. But to push away the
> limits of your mind, you need to begin thinking for yourself and
> questioning everything around you. And you cannot do such a ludicrous
> thing, since that's philosophic speculation ;) .
>
> > Maybe one day, after all, but
> >I think I'll be dead by then (and so maybe I'll know
> >first ! haha !)
>
> I pity you, with your thinking that there's nothing you can do to widen the
> range of your understanding. No surprise we argue so often...
>
> >And, if I may say, if we had followed only the
> >philosophical and religious speculators in the past,
> >we WOULD still sit in the dark ages (some yet are, as
> >it seems).
>
> What *is* philosophy in your opinion? Philosophy is by definition the art
> of thinking by yourself! You don't "follow" philosophical speculators
> (actually, the world as it exists *now* is the direct result of simply
> following the philosophical speculators of the past. Get over it), you use
> their findings to grow your own personal view of the world. You use their
> understandings to widen yours. Philosophy is not a closed state. It's not
> something old and rusty, that you have to treat as sacred. Philosophy is
> yourself, thinking and developing an understanding to things you didn't
> understand before. In many ways, science is just a branch of philosophy,
> which tries to understand how the material world works. Philosophy is much
> wider, and because of that it's much more relevant.
>
> > Nothing terrible about it: today glorious
> >days will perhaps be the dark ages for our grandsons.
> >This is perhaps not the end of evolution yet.
>
> And the only way not to stop our evolution is to carry on philosophying. If
> we stop, if we stop thinking by ourselves and widen our understanding, we
> will regress to those "dark ages" we took so long to get out of.
>
> Maybe if you stopped a little and wondering what *really* philosophy is,
> you would stop showing how much you misunderstand what it is...
>
> Christophe Grandsire.
>
>
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.
>