I have been the same?

Savater brings up a psychiatrist called Oliver Sacks, who wrote the book The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Savater clarifies that in this book a man named Thomson creates pasts for himself, as he suffered a desease, errasing all his memories. This could sound weird, because we never think about these types of situations, seeing them really far from us, but what if a common day you wake up the same.

I know I am Gaby, I know who I am, and I can tell you some experiences from what I have lived, I have a memory. All what I have lived, look like, feel, think, act, and so on are pieces of the whole I. But do I stop being me when these are gone? well possibly yes, in the way that if all those memories and experiences were took from me I would feel insecure of who I am, I may think for one second that everything is a lie, and that somebody is playing with me.

I don't rely so much on things I don't achieve by myself. Similarly, if a guy comes to your house and begins to tell you what should be your life and other experiences you supposedly had, then you would not coincide with him, and firmly answer I KNOW FOR SURE THAT'S NOT ME!
I am me because of what I am aware of, because of all those tiny little details whichever assembly to my individual, to my person.

I inside, I outside

This chapter is a really interesting chapter because it made me think on what happens in me and around me in the different aspects of my life.
In this chapter i found a quote writen by Rene Descartes that tells pretty much what we are, "I think, therefore I am" and about that quote my opinion says that we think that we exist but we don't think how we exist!
This quote shows us that we think critically so we can exist in this world and tells us that we are part of a real life and not a dream or an illusion. But anyway, I think that even if this quote is true or not, we will still live our lives and we can prove that we are alive by the statements and arguments that each of us can say or conclude.
another thing that 3rd chapter also made me think about, is that why do we ask about our lifes?, I mean why aren't we sure that we are alive if we can move, live, talk, and do whatever we want, so I think this is a little too much and we shouldn't be questioning about our lifes that is unique and we should enjoy it as much as we can.

Life: Reality or Illusion?

Reading chapter 3 of the book "The Questions of Life" was shocking for me because its ideas and thoughts were ones that I've never stumbled across before. In the previous chapters, as well as in the introduction, I concidered Savater's ideas a little out there but always worth thinking about. However, I must say that to me, his ideas in chapter 3 were way over the line. I think he "over-philosophized" and therefore must disagree with him.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for philosophy, I think is great that people question their lives in order to have a better understanding of it, but to me, discussing ideas like life being just a dream, or life being controlled by evil spirits, or us being just floating brains imagining everything is too much. Why? Because it has no purpose. Nothing good can come from discussing whether our lives are really the way we see them or not.

It is true that there's a possibilty that life as we see it is just an illusion, that maybe some evil god is making me imagine that I live in Torreon, that I go to school at Tec de Monterrey and that I play guitar while what's really happening is that I'm just a brain floating in a jar being controlled by this god who is making me imagine all this stuff.

Ok, so let's say this IS true, for the sake of arguing. So what? How does that change my life, or my "illusion of life"? Even if life as I see it is not what's really happening I'm going to keep living it am I not? Or imagining it if that's the case. Nothing's going to change right? Unless this "god" wants to change it, in which case there's nothing I can do because apparently he controls me.

Plus, I think life is just too big. There are way too many details in it for it to be just an illusion or a dream. I mean, I just can't imagine someone telling me that there's no Paris. That I simply imagined going to this beautiful place with this awesomely big tower, these great gardens and all that nice food. Or that music doesn't exist, that I imagined all these hundreds of artists coming up with these thousand songs which I love.

So why waste our time thinking about whether life as we know it is real or not? And whether or not we can control it? I say, live your life to the fullest, and if at the end it turns out that it was just a dream or an illusion, well, there was nothing you could have done right? Plus, you still have the memories don't you?

The truths of reason

A lot of people thinks that they know everything in the world but they don't prove it, they just say that is right or wrong but they don't show any procedure of how they found the final result.
As Fernando Savater said "I must seek arguments that enable me to accept my knowledge".
He is telling us that he always tries to prove his result with arguments o knowledge but he never says something not proven.
You can get knowledge from experience, and that's one of the best knowledge you can get, but still not enough to say that you know evereything like in this days lots of people says, and the truth is that we know nothing compared to what we should really know about life or other similar subjects.
Another way that someone wants to prove reason, is when two people or more are arguing and 1 person says that he is right and never goes down from there, they think they always have the reason and gives bad infomation just because their "life experience".
That's why since i read this chapter i know that i won't have the reason until i have enough arguments to prove it, or reasons to show.

Truth & Reason

"I must seek arguments that enable me to accept or refute my knowledge" - Fernando Savater 

Some people argue that they think that they know everything, they think that they are always right and that everything they say is true. You have to search for arguments and convince me that they are true, and then I can know if what I know is true.

One way by which people know what they know is by experience. When you live something or practice something, you understand it better, and now you know about it, like doing a chemistry experiment; you have to do it to know how or why a reaction happens. 

Another way by which people know what they know is by education. We go to school since we were little and since then, we start to gain information and start to understand things, procedures and stuff. As we grow up, we continue learning more stuff from our school or from our parents. 

The other way by which people know what they know is by believing in what other tell you. Its your choice if you trust them or not, you have to decide. You can't know if what they say is true; if you trust in them, you can believe in what they tell you. 

Like what Savater said in his book "The Questions of Life", "we have multiple sources of knowledge but they must all be screened by reason, which verifies, organizes and looks for coherence within what we know".

Truth

This week we read a chapter of truth and the author say that to have truth you need 3 things. Experiense, education and what people say to you. I say that you dont need the 3, you can have truth with just one, it doesnt matter which. You can be like a nerd in school and study books that are true and you can get truth. You can talk also to people who are very smart and they will tell you things that are truth. If you experiense a lot of things you can know without help the truths in life because we're all equal and we can all learn thruth, the only thing you have to do is think critically and use reason, like savater say, to know what things are true and what things are not true.

I think that you don't need the 3 things to learn the truth but i think it is easier to convine the three things to get truth because life is about a lot of things and its easier to learn from a lot of things than from one only thing, that way you can live life normal and learn from many things instead of just learning from one thing and miss all the other things that life has.

Truth and Reason

Truth and reason, two fundamental branches in the tree of wisdom. You have to have both in order to concider yourself smart and capable.

The tricky thing about truth is, like Savater mentions, that sometimes we take stuff for granted and classify it as truth, and the problem is that some of the times we may be wrong. I agree with Savater in that there are 3 ways to get truth, by experience, by education, and by telling.

Throughout the week we've discussed which one of these is the most important and the most popular choise has been experience, and although that does sound convincing I think that actually it is a matter of balance between all three.

You can stduy at school all the theory you want, you can read book after book for years but in the end if you don't apply that knowledge into real life it really won't be enough.

In the same way, you can talk to tons of people or travel around the world looking for experience and if you don't combine that with theory you still won't be able to claim you know all the truths life has to offer. People may be wrong, they may want to fool you or perhaps they're simply making stuff up to look smart, and also, the world is so big and rich in knowledge that, a) You couldn't experience everything in a life time, and b) there would still be stuff that even after experiencing you wouldn't understand.

So, in my opinion, in order to really obtain truth you have to do two things. First, obtain as much as you can from experience, education and socializing in a balanced way, and then filter it using your reason, that is to say, your intellect, so that you can decide what stuff to keep and what to throw away. This is a fundamental process in the learning path because if you believe everyhing you're going to get confused and probably contradict yourself on some point so, everytime you experience, read, or hear something, analize it, and, using your reason see if it makes sence. If you do so, I guarantee you, you'll be one step ahead in the path of wisdom and knowledge.