Worldliness, Detached-ness, and other thoughts

A question that has been bothering me for the past several days is whether one should ever worry about his or her inclination being too 'worldly' (入世) or too detached (出世). This is not a new problem - but it has recently re-emerged in my thoughts. I use the words 'worldliness' and 'detached-ness' in a very particular sense. I first came across this distinction in Fung Yu-lan's A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, where Fung described the Confucius strand of philosophy as being more worldly and Daoist as more detached. A worldly philosophy, generally speaking, emphasises more on acting for ends which do not lie after death. Conversely, a detached philosophy would place more weight on the kind of development which affect our 'life' after death. It would seem that some metaphysical position (on the purpose of life, the state of 'life' after death, etc.) must be assumed in order to know - with some confidence - how one should appropriately act in life, and hence whether one should incline more towards worldliness or detached-ness. 

A person with worldly inclinations would perhaps place a higher value on gaining respect, developing healthy social ties, and fulfilling social (and civic) duties through political participation and charity. In contrast, a person with 'detached' inclinations would, in some sense, be more 'solipsistic', or even egoistic: one's own pleasure, moral development, and maximisation of one's moral and mental potential would be priorities of the highest importance in that person's life. I associate the 'worldly' life with normality, 'common-ness', and vanity - for it is easy for any person to see that all political and social endeavours will ultimately be worth NOTHING, when one's life ends and with the passage of time. Such endeavours are only temporarily meaningful, conditional upon the observer's existence and that the observer sees such endeavours from a 'worldly' perspective, rather from one that is transcendent and, if I may, 'God-like': such that history is like a flowing river, where all human effort are merely vain attempts to make tiny impressions upon the river-bed, and shall ultimately be erased by time. Yet, neither the 'detached' life sounds absolutely attractive - how should one know whether Truth, the ultimate 'Realisation', or inner peace is actually attainable, and not in fact simply a fantasy of philosophers? And - already knowing how hollow and empty the vanities of fame, wealth and rank are, how should one be able to embrace such vanities again without deceiving oneself? 

And if possible, how should one reconcile these two extreme inclinations? There are more other problems which flow from the original question. Is it really better to be an unhappy Socrates than to be a happy fool? CAN analysing grammar and semantics of words help humans decide how to live well? Do morality and social values (virtues & vices) only matter because we can - put simply - put ourselves in other people's shoes?

Arrogance, Free Will and Nature

Sometimes we become very sure of ourselves, believing that we have in our lives achieved some greatness, and even that we are superior to others. We may believe that such an opinion - that we are great or superior - is justified, qualified by certain deeds that we have performed or certain virtues that we have displayed. But are we ever truly worthy of holding such an opinion?

I question this because it has crossed my mind that our actions and behaviour are never, in the strictest sense, controlled by us. The decisions we make to execute particular actions - for example, to read a book this evening - are ultimately consequences of circumstances. Circumstances such as our upbringing, birth and particular people or events which appear in our lives, all play a role in affecting our every action and thought. While it may seem to us that we have total control over what we think and what we will, the idea that this feeling is merely an illusion can sound very compelling, though maybe at first counter-intuitive. Just think: every thought that you have ever thought must have been a consequence of an array of factors (e.g. events or individuals which inspired you to develop ideas, people who taught you language, your birth which gave you your capacity to think and develop ideas, etc.), none of which you can strictly say is your very own (even this very precise thought). Thus, it would always be foolish to genuinely believe that we are all entirely worthy of what we have thought, created or did. This is not to say that acting arrogantly or acting as if you are very proud of yourself does not necessarily have any practical social benefits - at the same time I am not suggesting that there is any - but I am merely pointing out that believing that you yourself are a self-made man, or that you deserve all the glory for any of your actions, is foolish.

None of our achievements are truly ever our very own - none of our achievements would have existed without the facilities (e.g. our mind) Nature has endowed us with, and without the very particular circumstances that Nature has brought about. This Nature of which I speak of - I am referring to the natural order of things, which some refer to as God. I refrain from referring It to as God for fear of its misleading connotations.

Ultimately, I hope this demonstrates how being humble and valuing humility as a virtue is wiser than being arrogant and too sure of oneself.

On truth in politics

How many of us can claim that our beliefs have remained constant and unchanged throughout our entire lives? I would guess the the answer to that question is very few, if not none at all. For the insistence to hold the same belief in the light of new, conflicting evidence would be a kind of dogmatism. If dogmatism prevails, science would never progress and debates would be ultimately fruitless. In the most extreme form of dogmatism, nothing can be learnt from any enquiry or reasoning activity. Hence, it seems that there is nothing wrong or problematic about revising our beliefs when we come across new and credible evidence which demonstrates to be inconsistent with what we originally believe. In fact, it seems to be the rational thing to do. 

If this conclusion holds true, then the question of what evidence we choose to expose ourselves to is highly important. One may ask the following question, ‘Surely if one is to maximise the chances of attaining the truth, one must be exposed to ALL available evidence?’ That is a valid point. However, faced with the physical constraint of possessing finite resource and time, and that the sum of all knowledge in the world is of such an unimaginably huge quantity (if not infinite), how is it possible for us to realistically expose ourselves to ALL available evidence? 

If it is established that possessing complete awareness of all available evidence is impossible, then the overall balance of the evidence we access becomes an important issue. If it is not possible to become aware and to comprehend all the literature against, say, wealth redistribution, then the least that one can do is to ensure that one is exposed to the evidence provided by both sides of the debate. Whether any debate can be simplified into two clearly distinct sides is another issue, but staying open-minded in what we read and listen to seems to be the best approach of preventing ourselves from falsely believing in lies. 

To judge what is true and what is false, in politics, is an extremely difficult task. In contrast to philosophy, or in the natural sciences, there is a huge interest to deceive and to create exaggerated, if not downright false reports. A false report of a scandal, or perhaps the taking of a certain individual’s words out of context, for instance, can be of extreme benefit to a particular party. Even statistics can be interpreted, or should I say distorted, in ways which could advance a particular political end. How can we judge whether we are learning or whether we are being brainwashed by false ‘knowledge’?

‘Reason’ - may be the typical response to this question. But is reason infallible? Even the cleverest person in the world, it seems, is vulnerable to making mistakes. Even IF we concede that the cleverest person in the world is capable of avoiding all possible mistakes in reasoning, then it would seem that the average person must at least be vulnerable to some error in judgment. I understand that excess scepticism can debilitate action; but it seems that if we wish to hold true beliefs, or simply to avoid holding false beliefs, we must be sceptics to some extent. I also acknowledge that being overly sceptical can prevent us from fully committing to a cause; but perhaps this is only because a full commitment, when lacking a balanced knowledge ‘around a subject’, is rarely an embodiment of rationality. What this further entails is that perhaps one should always think carefully before making any claims about what they know or believe with certainty, particularly when the belief in question concerns politics.

Is there any reason to think that God is omnipotent?

Omnipotence, typically understood as the property of being all-powerful, is one of the unique properties of God in the classical theistic conception. Here, I shall examine two common objections raised against the view that God is omnipotent. Although the objections may sound persuasive at first glance, I shall argue that none of them are effectively knock-down arguments against the omnipotence of God. Hence I shall attempt to sustain the view that it is reasonable to think that God is omnipotent.
Since the conception of God is hardly univocal, I shall limit this discussion to the God of classical theism – the God who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and depends on nothing for His own existence. 
In this brief entry I shall examine two distinct objections of the following type: the first objection aims to demonstrate that omnipotence as a concept is incoherent, and the second objection that omnipotence cannot be reconciled with God’s other divine attributes.
The first objection is often formulated as a question. Similar forms such as this have often advanced by the sceptic: ‘Is God able to lift a rock so heavy that He himself is unable to lift it?’ This creates a paradox for theists: either way, God cannot be omnipotent because (1) if he can create such a rock, he is not powerful enough to lift it, and clearly the case (2) if he cannot create such a rock.
The most satisfactory response so far known to this paradox is to offer an alternative definition of ‘omnipotence’. With this definition, God is not plainly ‘all-powerful’; God is ‘all-powerful, but bounded by the laws of logic’. The second step of this response is to then, point out that ‘a rock so heavy that it cannot be lifted’ is a concept which is logically incoherent, and hence one cannot reasonably ask God to create such an object. It would be akin to asking God to create, for instance, a married bachelor or a square circle, which are all logically impossible ‘objects’.
I find this response valid. To consider the alternative – as held by Descartes - that God is all-powerful and is unlimited by logic - is itself an incomprehensible view, and hence unsustainable. It would be meaningless to employ reason and logic in arguing for the existence of God; for how could any comprehensible conclusion be reached if God is beyond the realms of reason? Moreover, the ‘heavy rock’ concept is one that does not seem to be conceivable, and it seems justify to describe it as a logically impossible concept.
The second objection which I plan to look at attacks the incoherence between omnipotence and another divine attribute: omnibenevolence, or all-good-ness. Again, the objection is most efficiently phrased in a question: can God do evil? This objection seems to place the proponents of theism in a dilemma: if God is omnipotent, then it seems definite the case that God can do evil; however, being all-good, it seems that God cannot do evil. Thus, the objection seems to place theists in a dichotomy where one of the aforementioned attributes must be rejected.
One possible response to this objection is to employ some analysis of the idea of omnibenevolence. The property of being all-good does not necessarily have to be an intrinsic property in the sense that it can limit God’s power; God can simply be all-good because all the actions which stem from God are good, in a somewhat Sartre-esque sense. While this may entail problems which come with the metaphysical view that an external, objective value of ‘good’ exists beyond God, it does demonstrate that God is indeed all-powerful in his nature. I admit that this response is not ideal as it cannot demonstrate that God is all-powerful in effect; but it seems to be more sustainable than its alternatives e.g. redefining ‘omnipotence’ as ‘all-powerful but bound by the laws of logic and morality’.
But is it reasonable to think that God is omnipotent? Although some reasonable theistic responses have been elucidated, admittedly, I don’t think my defence of theism has completely removed the force in its critics’ objections. It is, I think, no longer possible nor consistent to hold ‘omnipotence’ in its original starting definition.