From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Sun Sep 05 1999 - 23:34:32 MDT
The future of transhumanism looks bright to me.
(Even brighter if we can manage to avoid wasting too much time with
religiosity, politics, romance, sports, or philosophy.)
-------------------------------
Brian Manning Delaney wrote,
>Seems odd, since science is a subset of philosophy.
Excuse me, but I had never heard that claim before.
As an experiment (yeah, go ahead, point out that you wish I had gone fishing
instead) I've switched the words science and philosophy in some of the
thread's earlier
comments. (Notice the confrontational flame bait tone.)
"Seems," not is. (And "seems" only to someone who doesn't understand
science.)
If you have no grounds, care to admit that you, in fact, are (for ex.) just
acting out the delusions of our epoch, and aren't willing to admit that
philosophy -- whatever its power and excitement -- may lack a sufficient
grounding to be called "true" (different from "effective," please note)? Or,
at a minimum, that you can't figure out such grounds, and have just
uncritically
swallowed the spirit of our age?
If not, I suggest you stop making this claim [that science is a subset of
philosophy].
And, above all, read some Dawkins!! (He outdid Nietzsche by a long shot.
I think your attempt to deride reveals a little bit of bigotry and
ignorance -- because you have ignored the possibility that I've read
Nietzsche, and presume to know
how his views relate to mine.)
Showing that _you_ can ask the wrong questions doesn't make your definition
of science a good definition of it.
You have not given any arguments to support your opinion that "science is a
subset of philosophy," so I must assume that you either have no arguments or
are so ashamed of them that you do not want to share them with us. The
reasons for that can be multitude, but it's very probable that it's because
your opinion about science is just that, an opinion.
To take your definition, science would not try to understand, and validate,
what is meant by "knowledge," and "empirical" (and, for that matter,
"verification").
And where can we look up a definitive definition of your concept of subsets?
And how do we know that they are true?
It might look like hair-splitting ramblings to you, but
without scientists asking the hard and boring questions,
we'd still be in the middle ages arguing with Aristotelian philosophers
about how many teeth women have.
Gallilei and other people critical of the philosophical
regime of the church were there because of science.
>And mailing list like these seem to become a refuge for people
>who don't understand either :(
Your comments tell me that you don't understand what you accuse others of
not understanding. You just love sophistry (AKA philosophy).
-------------------------------------
I still consider it as silly to classify astrophysics a subset of astrology
as to classify science a subset of philosophy.
No doubt you can hold forth at length as to how you've arrived at this
particular classification system, and perhaps we can make it a book length
discourse suitable for www.fatbrain.com. We may, however, find it difficult
to locate anyone willing to read it, much less pay for it.
.--, .--,
( ( \.---./ ) )
'.__/o o\__.'
={= ^ =}=
> - <
"I don't want to make a religion (or ideology, or political movement) out of
anti-entropy.
I'd just like to help extropic technologies evolve auto-catalytically toward
transhumanity."
--Alligator Grundy (attributed to Jean Robaire Leakey-Gasquet)
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of Truth and
Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
--Albert Einstein
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