Practicalities and the Moment

The question of how much time and effort we ought to give over to feasible, (social) norm-aligning commitments which look rewarding in the long term, versus ones which are passionate and highly gratifying (feverish, even) in the short-term but looks hardly maintainable in the foreseeable future, manifests itself as a recurring motif in many human lives. While initially the former may seem obvious to be the wiser choice, reality rarely presents its questions and dilemmas in such a simple form. Although we have a natural inclination to look forward into the future, and hence that it would seem natural to seek long-term stability and security, we may sometimes be confronted by the fact that life is indeed very short, and that there is always scarcely enough time to spend on what one is madly passionate about. If our lives are essentially constituted of our memories of moments (of happiness, or banal survival) in our lives with a continuous stream of moments extending into the present, then ought we not make sure that each of these moments are meaningful, unforgettable, and well-lived? After all, the past and the present does come in much greater certainty than the future. Seize the day, and the moments that you have seized will be unchangeable and yours forever, assuming that your memory and sanity remains intact.  

Das versteht ihr alle nicht, ha ha! 

Yet if all of this was so elegantly simple, then no original dilemma would have existed in the first place; if the choice between practicality and seizing the moment was so easy, then as a recurring motif in life, this would be a motif no more significant than the mechanical routine of breathing, eating and sleeping. Humans have an innate psychological will which drives them to achieve stability, to settle, and to construct something permanent (be it a relationship, ideas, or physical things). To do this, one must indeed look farther into the future, and avoid being distracted by the short-lived glitter that tempts you from the side. 'Temptation' is merely a derogatory label, and whether something is a temptation is already decided by your own opinion of the whole matter. Whether ignoring the 'glitter' is the right choice, of course, depends on what is the source of the will that drives you to action. In other words, what you truly value (or strongly care about) will ultimately determine what perspective you adopt, or what reasons you would (be inclined to) offer to justify your actions. 

If what glitters on the side can so easily be dismissed as a mere delusion, or something of no particular value, then perhaps it does psychologically reflect that -- for you -- it is not a moment worth seizing. 

Storm(s)

Sometimes, certain events and relationships in life can really catch you off guard, and threaten to dismantle the entire set of beliefs and values that you once depended on for survival. Such events and relationships affect us emotionally, and attack us where we are most vulnerable: no human made of flesh and blood who is male or female, intelligent or brute, wealthy or poor, idealist or pragmatic, is impenetrable at his or her heart. The heart represents the set of things that we value or care about the most. We do not need to be conscious of what we value to actually care about things: deprive a man of something that you suspect he loves and offer him no prospect of getting it back, and if he does indeed value it, you will subsequently see that you have also deprived him of his vitality, his appetite, his sleep, his control over his facial expressions, and his meaning to live. By attacking his heart, you plunge the man into a state of emotional excess, and if that doesn't generate extreme sadness, then you may yield extreme hatred, or anger. If you are tempted to think that such extreme emotions only exist on an abstract, conceptual level, reconsider; emotions generate real physiological effects, and in the case of extreme emotions, the physiological effects produced by those emotions can be absolutely crippling.

And when these events and relationships hit us, or when we know that such things are about to turn our lives upside-down, there are few things that one can do. Like knowing that a violent storm is coming straight at you and you have no place to shelter yourself, the only thing to do is to brave the storm; or face the music, so to speak. Under these circumstances, there are only two roads that one can take: stand strong in the face of rain and wind - at least a last attempt, struggle at survival -  or perish quietly and insignificantly.  

On philosophy of [an empirical science]

I cannot recall how many times I've encountered baffled and incredulous responses when I told someone that I am reading in areas such as philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology and philosophy of biology. In general, there are two main types of responses:

(A) "You're not even a physicist." or "You don't even do psychology."
(B) "These areas seem terribly irrelevant. Why are you studying these areas as part of a philosophy degree?" or "What do any of these things have to do with each other?"

This entry will be primarily address the type (B) responses. This may come across awkwardly like an attempt to justify how I spend my time, but I think this should also make several convincing points about (i) the value of interdisciplinary research and (ii) the role of philosophy in scientific research. 

Let me first quote a few lines from Gabbay, Thagard and Woods (2006):

"Whenever science operates at the cutting edge of what is known, it invariably runs into philosophical issues about the nature of knowledge and reality. Scientific controversies raise such questions as the relation of theory and experiment, the nature of explanation, and the extent to which science can approximate to the truth. Within particular sciences, special concerns arise about the nature of space and time, and in psychology about the nature of consciousness. Hence the philosophy of science is an essential part of the scientific investigation of the world."

From the General Preface of Handbook of The Philosophy of Science.

I think this quote does a neat job of summarising the several key philosophical questions which arise in different sciences like physics and psychology. It may seem sometimes that philosophy is only concerned about abstract, impractical (or not immediately useful) questions and far-fetched notions like, "do souls exist?" or "Are there possible worlds?" or "Is abortion morally wrong?"; I think this is a very, very narrow view of the role of philosophy. Anyone who has done a bit of history of philosophy would be aware that philosophy started out (see Ancient Greek philosophy for examples) inquiring questions which our science is now accounting for: "what is matter made of?" (Chemistry and Physics), "how does the mind work?" (Cognitive Sciences) and "where do we come from?" (Evolutionary Biology), etc. To a certain extent, one can say this for any question that was once asked in philosophy: if there has been any success in answering the question at all, that "success" is now represented by a particular thriving field in science. 

Philosophy is the mother of science. 

What philosophy is left with are unanswered questions, or at least questions which we haven't managed to offer a satisfactory answer to yet. Sometimes these questions are ancient ("What created the world?"), and sometimes these are relatively new ("Do quantum mechanics suggest that not every event has a cause?"). What's common about these questions is that they are often at the cutting edge or the fore field of scientific disciplines. They are questions which, if you like, mark out the (current) boundaries of human knowledge. 

So now you see, at least, why it would be exciting to be able to study the most up-to-date problems which science is working on (so that you see one is not necessarily confused about what one is studying). It remains a question why philosophers, instead of scientists from their own fields, should be paying attention to such research questions. Shouldn't philosophers leave it to the experts? 

My answer may be slightly controversial. I suggest that not all of these questions cannot be answered from their respective empirical fields alone, and the reason for that is because these areas of study do not contain the necessary resources to answer those questions. These questions are often ones which require interpretation, occasionally inter-disciplinary work, and reflection about the most fundamental principles. For example, it is not difficult to see how questions like "are our capacities to speak language innate?" depends very much on how our concept of "innate" is defined. Philosophy does a lot of that conceptual analysis work. Sometimes, philosophy shows certain concepts to be ill-defined, and that can inspire more cautious or refined modelling work from the scientists. On its own, philosophy may not be very successful in answering questions; but in the wider research system (where nowadays disciplines are highly specialised) philosophy plays an important role in scrutinising concepts, interpreting theories and developing ideas for inter-disciplinary research projects. To make this a little more convincing, here are a few examples:

• Clarifying the role of an "observer" in quantum mechanics. Arising paradoxes suggest that this does not have to do uniquely with human consciousness. 
• Analysing whether certain evolutionary explanations (for instance, of modern human behaviour) are over-speculative. For instance, Evolutionary Psychology is very intuitive, but if one looks further into the cognitive framework in which it is grounded on (i.e. Mass Modularity), it is much less convincing.  
• Answering ethical questions (legal, eventually) with moral psychology and with evolutionary theory: it is very plausible that our moral instinct (conscience) has an evolutionary origin, and there is strong evidence that morality is grounded more on emotions rather than reason. This actually reflects the usefulness of empirical work, but what I mean to show is that inter-disciplinary research can be valuable.

All in all, what I'm trying to say is that not all kinds of philosophy are useless and hopelessly detached from the world. There is much more to philosophy than just solipsistic armchair philosophy. 

分享：點解要用粵文?

【我哋需要一場粵語新文化運動】 (輔仁媒體, 2014 年 3 月 4 日) [Click]

呢一篇短短既文章討論左好多題材，以下係佢主要既幾個論點：

• 因為以下各種原因，我地唔應該歧視白話文（即粵文）：

• 歷史論證: 白話文有好悠久既歷史(五四運動時已有人推行白話文)。我哋宜家以北方官話用為「書面語」，實係基於當時政治發展所影響。

• 語言學論證I: 係語言學既角度（如文法、用詞）分析，係睇唔出白話文同一般大路語文(如英語、德語）有咩分別。

• 實用主義論證:用白話文，可以令粵語用者更準確地表達自己。唔俾人用自己語言去表達自己，唔多唔少係違反自然。
• 語言學論證II:因為語言一般既文法同用字都係約定俗成，所以話白話文「冇自己既字」而棄用白話文既論證唔成立。

(相片來源: learningtree.files.wordpress.com)

其實呢篇文章本來主要係想鼓勵香港發展一場粵語新文化運動，但係對我來講最有趣係佢用語言學既論據黎支持佢個論點。有呢啲咁實在既證據支持，我哋仲有咩原因去話粵語「只係一種dialect, 唔係language」?　

（引述語言學家 Max Weinreich，佢有一句，"a language is a dialect with an army and navy." 粵語冇一個有實力既「代表國」，受到抹平其實唔係好出奇。不過，可以見得語言同俗語/方言既分別係好隨意，好arbitrary。)

除左可以話發展粵文「非常之唔經濟·、好多餘」同埋「有違大中華思想」之外，我實在唔係好諗到有咩其他好少少既原因去反對發展粵文。況且，以上兩個原因都冇咩說服力。

呢篇文章既論證同idea 都幾值得研究，特此分享下。

How Real is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)?

The question of "what exists?" (or "what is real?") is a recurring hot topic in philosophy. Admittedly, at first glance this question may sound like one of those impractical brain-teasers that philosophy is often accused for producing (consider: how is necessary knowledge knowable only a posteriori possible? I've yet to be convinced of the usefulness of this inquiry). While I do find some philosophical questions to be almost ridiculously detached from practice and common sense, I am generally persuaded that questions concerning existence or reality have important implications for how general research should proceed. 

Here are a short list of questions of this type, which reveal their links with other disciplines: 

• Do moral values exist?
• Do numbers exist?
• Does the four-dimensional space-time (sub. for any other theoretical entities in well-confirmed scientific theories) exist? 
• Does the mind (or the soul) exist? ...

And of course, there is the familiar and perennial "Does God exist?" debate.

In these questions, I'm generally treating "Does x exist?" and "Is x real?" to be asking the same questions, which I don't think is particularly problematic for now. My query this time is about the realism of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM): does chi (氣) exist? Is "internal heat" (熱氣) real? Are there really meridians and collaterals (經脈, 絡脈) running through our body? 

Are meridians real? Why can't we find corresponding physical structures then?
(Photo courtesy from www.healing-with-eft.com)

I was first introduced to this general problem when I came across Richard Dawkins' The Enemies of Reason (2007) documentary series, which challenged superstitious practices that lacked good scientific evidence (Youtube link here). Although the documentary did not look specifically into acupuncture or other practices in TCM, its attack on suspicious "alternative medicine" practices really struck me, since in Hong Kong (where I was raised) I was taught and grown accustomed to the belief that TCM had genuine therapeutic effects and is as legitimate a medical enterprise as orthodox western medicine. I was told that one should only have moderate amount of fries (or generally any deep-fried food) and lychee because it contributes to "internal heat" (熱氣), a phenomenon which manifests itself in acne, bad breath and smellier gas.

Lychee: the fruit that TCM suggests as causally responsible for the phenomenon of "internal heat".
(Photo courtesy: vpwallpapers.com) 

Interestingly, I was brought up with the belief that the globally inferior status of TCM to orthodox western medicine was due to political reasons or poor marketing, rather than skepticism over its ineffectiveness. After watching the documentary and looking at a few papers and articles raising doubts or citing the lack of statistical significance for TCM (Novella, S,,2012; Yeh, L. et al., 2007; Shang, A. I., et al., 2007, Quackwatch, 2011), I felt (at least slightly) swayed to the side of the skeptic. 

Here are some general problems that arise for the realism of TCM: 

(1) If the entities and the structures (e.g. chi, meridians, etc.) postulated by the general theory that is TCM are real, why is it still so difficult to express these structures in the terms available in biology and physiology? Defenders of TCM may argue that this is a problem that isn't specific to TCM, since many branches of science are to some extent incommensurable (Cf. neuroscience and cognitive science face their own challenges in linking neurons and concepts). But what can we say about incommensurability then? 

• (A) Both TCM and the natural sciences are right. Reality, in this case, is perspectival or relative (?)
• (B) TCM is wrong - assuming that there is a single objective reality. 
• (C) TCM is right - and assuming that there is a single objective reality, the natural sciences have gotten something awfully wrong. 
• (D) There is nothing importantly wrong with TCM or the natural sciences. More research work has to be conducted to find out about how the theories translate into each other. 

(2) Although TCM has a long history of development, researchers have found it difficult to come up with enough statistical significance to show that TCM is really effective. While this may be explained away with the holistic nature of TCM and the difficulty in excluding the placebo effect (Yeung), the lack of statistically significant results raises doubts as to whether the entities postulated are really there.   

(3) If TCM is a true theory, should it not be able to pass empirical tests just like any other successful theory? (The "test of time" is often cited as an argument for TCM, but this should not matter; if it is true, then it should pass empirical tests anyhow)

The names may look familiar, but the same names refer to very different things in TCM than in the natural sciences or western medicine. It is also difficult to parse the individual causal relations between organs and energies. (Photo courtesy: drdonfa.ca)

Admittedly, all of this is a gross simplification of the controversy, but the point is that TCM does come with features which attract genuine skepticism about its reality. I acknowledge that a short blog piece can go nowhere to covering a topic of such breadth and controversy, but I think it's still worth highlighting that there is a live debate here. It is humbling to know how things that I thought I was reasonably familiar with can be so easily doubted into non-existence (it hasn't yet, by the way - the jury is still out). 

While we can wait for more empirical studies to come out to confirm (or disconfirm) the effectiveness of TCM, here are a few questions that we can think about: 

• IF TCM is effective but only effective in virtue of the psychological (placebo) effect, is it then established that the entities and structures in TCM do not exist? (... what is the criteria for determining reality?)
• IF TCM is effective in virtue of real causal interactions with its postulated entities (e.g. chi), then is biology and medicine as we know it seriously inadequate? OR... can we just step back and say that there is no single objective description of reality as presented by the natural sciences? (this of course depends on whether principles in TCM are fundamentally contradictory with the natural sciences)
• Should we care about existence at all? Does it only matter whether theories are useful, and not whether they are true? 

Caveats

• The dichotomy between TCM and the natural sciences is grossly simplified here. It would be interesting and illuminating to look at more details between their respective claims. 
• There are different interpretations of TCM principles and structures, even within TCM itself. This may change the debate if particular interpretations are fully compatible with natural science. 
• The references are terrible here, since they aren't supposed to be proper academic references. But they do provide interesting further reading if you follow the links. 

Doing Philosophy is Like Wiping Glasses

There was this one occasion where I was trying to explain the purpose of philosophy to a friend, and I came up with a nice little analogy on the spot. The question of 'what is the purpose of philosophy' has never exactly been the easiest question to answer (despite the number of times the question has been asked), so I thought it'd be quite useful to remember this analogy to help me deliver the same point in the future. So here it is:

Imagine that having an unreflective mind is like wearing a pair of really dirty spectacles. On these spectacles, you've got dust, dirt, bits of hair and stains all over the lens. It's filthy. Nevertheless, your spectacles function okay in most circumstances. You're still able to read, play tennis, or watch the television. You have no substantial problem with your vision. 

(Photo from flickr.com)

Doing philosophy, or reflecting, is like wiping those dirty spectacles clean. By that action, you remove certain stains, stray bits of hair, and stubborn particles adhering to the lens; in philosophy, the equivalent action is the removal of inconsistencies, fallacies or obscure thinking from your mind. 

Like dirt and stains, inconsistencies and obscure thinking are not always important. While you can function normally in life wearing a pair of dirty spectacles, you can also function normally in life with your mind clouded by obscurity.

Occasionally, but only so occasionally, these stains are significant. You may mistake those stains as actual stains on an object you're looking at. You may wrongly believe that there is a crack on the wall where in fact there's only a strand of hair sticking on your spectacles. Similarly, fallacies can occasionally mislead you into engaging in silly behaviour. You may draw unwarranted conclusions by not thinking carefully enough. You may make a fool of yourself by saying illogical things in public. 

Is it important to do philosophy? It's a bit like asking, "is it important to wipe your spectacles?" While not wiping your spectacles doesn't really pose a serious health hazard, it seems like a good idea to do so. After all, why not? You're here to live, not just to survive - right? There's something good in being able to see things clearly, even if it doesn't always make a tremendous difference to what you do.

What is the purpose of philosophy? In my previous post, I suggested that it has something to do with conceptual analysis. This answer - understood in the context of this analogy - is apt in the sense that it does not suggest that philosophy contributes to producing a priori knowledge, but rather has more of a role in organising the empirical knowledge that science produces. Wiping the lens does not change how far or small you can see, but merely lets you see what you already see with greater clarity.

This is after all just one way of thinking about philosophy, and probably just a very restricted sense of philosophy. But I think it's pretty close to what philosophers do. 

A Picture of a Modern Man

In this post, I'm going to illustrate the belief system of a 'modern man'. This 'modern man' is not representative or typical of any existing individual or any individual in an existing culture, so I'm not promising that you will be able to find someone like this in real life. For our purposes, think of this 'modern man' as a hypothetical being. Let's call him 'Bob', and these are the things that Bob believes in:

Hypothetical 'modern man' Bob.
(Sorry for the illustration)

Charity

For me (Bob), there is no reason to spare any charity to anyone, unless I am compelled to do so by a strong emotional feeling or any non-moral motivations. Non-moral motivations may include the need to maintain a 'healthy' public image or the need to conform to norms (familial, social, etc.). For example, if volunteering makes me sound like a kind person or makes me look good on my CV, I'd do it primarily for those reasons. 

While I may not donate money to a suffering child in a distant country, I am still willing to pay a significant sum to help a friend out because I am emotionally attached to that friend. 

Politics
Political issues are uninteresting, unless these issues directly affect me or those whom I care about. By 'directly', I mean that the cause-and-effect is immediate and visible. For instance, changes in primary education funding policy are uninteresting, because I (Bob) do not expect to have any children in the foreseeable future and the welfare of any particular child does not affect me at the moment. 

Religion and the Meaning of Life

I do not deny that questions about religion and the meaning of life are important, but you can describe me as a 'procrastinator' in terms of how I actually behave in my inquiry. Other problems (e.g. earning a living, dressing to look smart, resolving conflicts and calculating tax payments) are actually more pressing, and importantly, more tractable than the question about God or the meaning of life. However, as a matter of intuition, I'm more inclined towards atheism than any other religious slash philosophical systems. I'm also more inclined to the view that there is no afterlife.

While I'm not exactly the 'carpe diem' or 'YOLO' sort of person, I believe in prioritising my time in solving the problems which have a real immediate impact. As for the "zen", mystical kind of questions, I'll figure them out at some point in the future when I've got a lot of time on my hands and nothing to do. 

Morality (general) 

My general judgments about what's right and what's wrong typically depends on (1) the beliefs of those around me and (2) the limited range of information I'm exposed to, but this is something that I'm reluctant to admit. In a nutshell, I 'go with the flow' with respect to morality, but I don't like to be thought of as someone who does so. Alternatively, you can describe me as 'practical' in relation to morality. 

The magnitude of my feelings about these judgments are generally weak to moderate, unless they are those which make an immediate and visible impact on how I live. 

So this is Bob. A law-abiding, practical, 'normal' man who is loyal to his family and friends but does not 'stick out' to irritate the norms of society. Call him materialistic, but Bob would say that there isn't a very good reason to behave otherwise. Why, after all, should anyone commit themselves to idealistic beliefs (about morality or politics) when they cannot know their truth or benefit from them within a single life time?  

But is anything wrong with Bob? 

Year in Review 2013

2013 has been a relatively productive year for this blog. While the output is nowhere near other blogs on my reading list (like Philosophers Anonymous or Think Tonk), I thought this blog nonetheless deserves a short review of the past year. This review includes a short summary of every post published in 2013, apart from those short ones which were essentially re-posts and contain very limited original material. Most of these posts are thematically centred around a question, which for the sake of convenience I've formatted them in maroon. 

Hopefully, 2014 will be an equally good year, if not better.
Happy new year to you all.

(Note: for all links, replace domain maobites.blogspot.com with iarguethis.blogspot.com if they cannot be accessed)

YEAR IN REVIEW 2013

(Photo courtesy: library.wright.edu)

1. Thinking about meaning (February)
In this post, essentially I asked the question of 'what is meaning?', and explored the features that an intuitive theory of linguistic meaning would require. I ended the post with another question, suggesting that objectivity is something that probably does not apply to meaning. Looking back I now think the analysis wasn't very thorough, but a couple of interesting questions were raised in this post.

2. 'Fetch' analogy, meta-thinking and the is-ought gap (June)

This is one of my favourite posts of the year. I came up with this pessimistic analogy which compares a dog playing 'fetch' with a human being pursuing his or her goals. This is an existential worry that we all would encounter at some point of our lives: what is the whole point of living? In this post I explore this analogy further and present several philosophical solutions in which we can think about this analogy/question without necessarily being pessimistic.

3. Some Thoughts About Morality (July)

It's a question as old as homo sapiens: why are some actions good (or bad), and where does morality come from? Again, I try to articulate answers to the question which are both consistent with our intuitions and philosophically unproblematic. At the end, I suggest that the most plausible way to think about morality is perhaps to see it merely a useful evolutionary adaptation that has helped our species survive in natural selection. I explored this idea in further detail in (12). 

4. Be a chicken - it's okay (July)
This is one of the shorter 'original' posts that I've written in 2013. Is fear a bad thing? From a perspective, this post was an attempt to justify the shame or embarrassment of being called a 'chicken'. This is also one of the few posts where I've alluded to some concepts in Chinese philosophy.

5. On Receptivity (August)

Why is it good to be receptive? Here, I explore the benefits of being a receptive person, and argue that receptivity is highly underrated as a virtue.

6. Paradigm Shift (August)

When is it alright to change your political views? I did not so much offer an answer, but I was contemplating whether it is a disgraceful thing to throw all of your old political views out of the window.

7. Follow you heart... not! (August)

Is it meaningful to give others the advice 'follow your heart'? I said not really, and gave a few reasons why. 

8. Beyond Logic (November)

Why must logic apply to things? Why necessarily? This post answers a bizarre question of why philosophers think so highly of logic in its ability to reveal truth about things. (With hindsight, the arguments in this post may have been less rigorous than the typical standard here. This probably means that I should revisit this topic in 2014)

9. Six Reasons Why Philosophy Can Be Frustrating (November)

I don't agree with this post currently as much as I did when I wrote this. I may have been unfairly harsh on the discipline and the methodology. But it offers six reasons how doing philosophy can drive you nuts.  

10. Some Reflections on Philosophical Work: Fruits and Purposes (December)

Why do philosophy? I've always wanted to do a post like this, but I only got down to publishing it in late 2013. 

11. Potentially good idea: eliminating the a priori/a posteriori distinction (December)

This is the one where I try to demolish the a priori/a posteriori distinction: is it really a meaningful distinction? Illustrated.

12. Some Thoughts About Morality II (December)

Is morality just an evolutionary adaptation? If yes, then the implications seem grim...

13. Do ghosts exist? (December)

As titled. Perhaps you are sceptical whether this question can be answered without empirical inquiry, but I say you should try reading this first.