On Sun, 5 Sep 1999, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> >"Sounds," not is. (And "sounds" only to someone who doesn't understand
> >philosophy.)
>
> So, why don't you understand philosophy?
>
> Perhaps because philosophy means the art of asking the wrong questions.
Showing that _you_ can ask the wrong questions doesn't make your definition of philosophy a good definition of it.
You have not given any arguments to support your opinion, not even in your above reaction, 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 philosophy is just that, an opinion.
> >To take your definition, philosophy would
> >try to understand, and validate, what is meant by "knowledge," and
> > "empirical" (and, for that matter, "verification").
>
> If you don't understand those words, look them up.
And where can we look up a definitive definition of those concepts? And how do we know that they are true?
It might look like hair-splitting ramblings to you, but without philosophers asking the hard and boring questions, we'd still be in the middle ages.
Gallilei and other people critical of the totalitarian regime of the church were there because of philosophy (mostly inherited from the old greek and brought to Italy when the eastern Roman empire fell in 15-something).
> IMNSHO, philosophy is for people who can't understand science.
And mailing list like these seem to become a refuge for people who don't understand either :(
Rik
-- The Internet is not a network of computers. It is a network of people. That is its real strength. -- work at: http://www.reseau.nl/ home at: http://www.nl.linux.org/~riel/