科幻小说《三体》设定的外星文明——“三体文明”,有两个悖论式特点:一方面,三体文明的科技十分先进,领先人类科技若干代;另一方面,三体文明的哲学显著落后于地球文明。本文通过针对这一悖论的“思想实验”,围绕工程哲学的发展,讨论“三体哲学”对避免在“好的”工程的基础上发展出“坏的”哲学这样的极端情况所能提供的启发或警示,强调在哲学与实践的“相互作用”中发展和应用正确的“战略性”经验应对“前所未有”的机遇和挑战,提出语言载体与哲学形态的关系及相关的比较研究的必要性和可行性问题。

The "trisolarian civilization" is a fictional extraterrestrial civilization in the science fiction the "three-body problem". Comparing to human civilization on the Earth, this fictional extraterrestrial civilization has two contradictory features, namely the highly developed science and technology, and the tremendous low level of philosophy, being referred to as the "trisolarian paradox" in this article. In the philosophy of engineering, one of the important agenda of development is to prevent the "bad" philosophy from parastizing in the "good" engineering, which is intrinsically sensitive for any case study in the real world and difficult to investigate. On the other hand, the fictional (extraterrestrial) civilization provides the study of philosophy of engineering with a good, and almost unique, sample of thought experiments with extreme case scenarios. Making use of this advantage, this article performs the thought experiment on the "trisolarian paradox", with implications for the development of the philosophy of engineering. The thought experiment conjectures the possible causes of the "trisolarian paradox" by considering the interaction between social and thought development, the relation between ego and environment, and the role of language in the abstract concept in philosophy. The article questions that, although some artificial intelligence (AI)-like technology played an important role in the development of science and technology of the "trisolarian civilization", whether some original thoughts are able to "emerge" from the AI-like system, and whether there are some test similar. The Turing test to judge whether a civilization (no matter organic or mechanical) has already had its philosophy. Specially, the article argues that the philosophy which leads to the fundamental thoughts have to deal with the "strategic experience". Different from the "tactic experience" which relies on data and training, the "strategic experience" has to deal with the "unprecedented" opportunities and challenges. It is argued that the degree of pride and prejudice may not be an index of the development of philosophy, but is sure to be the important index of the lag-behind of philosophy as well as the civilization based on it. The article discussed the necessity and feasibility of the comparative studies on the relation between philosophy and language, by using the scenario that the communication mode in the "trisolarian civilization" is very different from that of the human civilization in that the former did not need any language, discussing what might be the form of the "trisolarian philosophy", and what is the relation between this phenomenon and the "trisolarian paradox". It is proposed that the relation between the language in use and the philosophy developed might be an interesting topic of comparative studies. Specifically, it might be important to explore what is the distinct feature of the philosophy of engineering as compared to the philosophy of arts, the philosophy of science, orr the philosophy of technology.