The Blog Writer's Existential Problem

What is the purpose of writing, if no one else is to read what is written?

Perhaps writing is therapeutic. But why write it in a blog?

Perhaps the writer hopes that someone else would read it. But why the half-measure? Why not market the blog?

Perhaps marketing the blog is self-defeating - it takes away the therapeutic effect of writing. Marketing blogs is an activity that is stressful... and mundane.

Then why write it in a blog?

Suspending Philosophical Thought

Is it possible to live an unexamined life that is worth living? 

And once you have 'examined' it, does that mean you do not have to examine it ever again?

Of course this does sound like the beginning of the sort of cliché nit-picking exercise that philosophers do. Philosophy - an activity that just seems completely unproductive, aimless; and in other words, a waste of time. 

In these last several months, I have not done anything of 'philosophical relevance'. This simply means that I haven't been reading anything written by philosophers, and neither have I been writing anything on stuff like logic, existence, morality, whatsoever. 

My mind wasn't idle though: my day-time job still involves a reasonably taxing amount of mental work, and I am learning new things - new ways of doing things - new things that are in the world - every day. So it couldn't be said that I've stopped thinking - I have only stopped thinking philosophically. If that makes sense. 

I most certainly am not relieved that I am no longer doing philosophy. It is not a positive feeling. I enjoyed philosophy. So I am definitely sure that I miss it, but aside from feelings I do not have any good rational justification for spending a significant amount of my time on philosophy. Unless, of course, if all the reasons of our actions are ultimately reducible to feelings...

Philosophy may be useful as a dinner-table topic, but it's not even something that everyone enjoys. Philosophy doesn't pay for the material goods that my body needs for its day-to-day functioning, and ipso facto it doesn't - materially or financially - support itself as an activity that is worth doing.   

Isn't it an indication of something profound that so much time have been spent (wasted) on figuring out whether philosophy is worth doing?   

Year in Review 2014

Admittedly, this "Year in Review" is a whole month too late. Men are often distracted from what they ought to be doing by changes in circumstance -- not to really blame this on human nature, but in this case I do feel that I have spent less time on this blog than I ought to have. Ever since I began working, I've been less able to afford time to think about fundamental questions (about "being"/existence, and the nature of various concepts) and to acquire knowledge about the world. Generally, there is also less time to read and to fish about the internet to find articles and writing that stimulates me. 

In my mind, the value of these activities have never diminished, and it is purely a matter of hard circumstances which has altered my habits. As odd as it is to say this, observing this disheartens me, and triggers a sort of frustration within me to do better -- a wake-up call -- to find a new balance between financial freedom and other things I value in life. 

This may be one of the most common existential problems inflicting people in the modern world. 

What I haven't done enough in 2014, I want to do more in 2015. I want to go places, meet people, learn about languages and cultures, read books, think new thoughts, and write (a lot). I want to have stimulating, deep conversations with people. I want to spend time on my guitar, and explore what I can do with it. I want to spend more time being creative, and less time repeating meaningless routines. While I should probably also think about financial growth and career progression, these two things somewhat come lower in rank in my list of frustrations. To use a teenage rebellious phrase not used in a long time -- whatever. 

To travel. 

Here's a list of posts like the one I did last year, except this year there are fewer posts -- and in vain I hope the quality compensates for the decrease in quantity.  

1. A Picture of A Modern Man (January)

2. Doing Philosophy is Like Wiping Glasses (February)

3. How Real is Traditional Chinese Medicine? (February)

4. 點解要用粵文? (March)
5. On philosophy of [an empirical science] (March)
6. Storm(s) (August)
7. Practicalities and the Moment (August)

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. 

Do ghosts exist?

It's not uncommon - even in this day and age - that we carry on to find genuine belief in the existence of ghosts. Even in cultures and populations where the belief that ghosts definitely exist isn't popular, agnosticism about the existence of ghosts is probably still prevalent. By people being agnostic, I mean that they do not reject the possibility that ghosts can exist. But with all the facts that we know about the universe available today, shouldn't we be able to reach - with some certainty - a conclusion regarding the existence of ghosts? With some amateur philosophical 'maneuvering', I attempt to demonstrate here that we have very good reason to believe that ghosts, or at least ghosts according to a particular conception, do not exist.

Casper the Ghost (Photo courtesy: maditsmadfunny.wikia.com)

Of course, to do this we need to start with a conception, or a definition of a ghost. Here are some properties - off the top of my head - which we may attribute to a ghost:

• A ghost is immaterial (non-physical)
• A ghost at least partly consists of some element of a person who was once alive but is now dead
• A ghost may also be conceived as the spirit,  consciousness, or soul of a dead person. 

The essential idea is that a ghost must be - whatever it is - a non-physical thing, and at least part of it belongs to an once alive person. Now let's get on to the analysis. 

To start off: what does it mean for something to be non-physical? It doesn't answer the question to simply list examples of things which are non-physical (e.g. God, mind, numbers), because these things do not tell us anything about the label 'non-physical'. Perhaps, we can understand something to be non-physical if it does not react (causally) with known physical laws. What this means is that a non-physical thing is not described by physical laws, and it is in a completely different realm from the physical world. A non-physical thing can do whatever it likes in the non-physical world, but it cannot in any way change how the physical world works. 

However, if that is true, all those ghost-featuring movies must have made a horrible mistake: EITHER ghosts are physical, OR ghosts cannot have any interactions with anything in the physical world at all. (We wouldn't have to worry about ghosts hiding in our bedrooms, because they cannot do anything physical to us)

Ghost (1990): Sam Wheat kissing Molly Jensen in this classic scene as a ghost. (Photo courtesy: tasteofcinema.com)

So, what if ghosts are physical? In my opinion, that doesn't seem to be a good way out either. To be physical, ghosts must react causally with our known physical laws. Unless we're willing to admit that physics   has gotten its fundamentals terribly wrong, it isn't consistent to hold the beliefs that ghosts can do certain things they do (e.g. alter mass, occupy no space, not made up of atoms). But remember, the knowledge of physics that human beings have built up over history has given us so much predictive success with the physical world: with that knowledge, we are able to land on the moon, send instant messages across the globe and split up atoms to create horribly powerful weapons of mass destruction. Is it really plausible to think then that ghosts exist?

Perhaps a few good rejoinders can still come from those 'ghost realists' (just made up this term to refer to those who think that ghosts exist). Firstly, realists may concede that ghosts cannot causally interact with the physical world. Okay, ghosts cannot move doors and make creepy weeping noises. But the fact that ghosts cannot interact physically does not stop ghosts from causally interacting with us in the mental realm! Effectively, this is saying that ghosts can and only can affect us psychologically. It would be more plausible then, to understand a ghost as a mental entity, something like numbers and concepts (or *beliefs?!). But would you say that numbers or concepts exist? But that is a much bigger question to deal with... (the question of whether mental things exist [not as in crazy, silly]).

The second (much less satisfactory) way that 'ghost realists' can respond is to say that ghosts are still physical, and they are still constrained by physical laws. This strategy allows us to understand ghosts as physical entities, but they would be much less robust as the 'ghosts' we know from movies and stories. Their 'status' would be equal to any other physical thing - humans, amoebas, tables, and the like - except that they are not living things! You can insist that this is true, but this approach offers a very poor and bizarre explanation of the universe, and it is largely inconsistent with what we already know about the universe.

So what's the verdict? Do ghosts exist? That very much depends on what type of ghosts we're talking about...

• Physical ghosts (highly unlikely)
• Non-physical ghosts capable of physical interactions (impossible; unless we define physical differently)
• Psychological ghosts (possibly; but even if they do exist, they would be as real to the same extent that numbers are real: "it's all in the mind")

Q.E.D.

*I hesitate to compare ghosts with beliefs, because beliefs are thought to have physical counterparts by some thinkers. 

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Some Thoughts About Morality II

In Some Thoughts About Morality I, I discussed briefly about the origins of 'right' and 'wrong' and what follows from adopting the view that we ought to act morally because it follows from intuitions (conscience). I ended the post with an introduction to the "evolutionary" theory of morality, giving neither a clear nor comprehensive account of what it is about. 

As I was writing Some Thoughts About Morality I about five months ago, frankly I was at that point unaware of the literature in Evolutionary Psychology.* While I was quite illuminated by some of the material that I then came across, I will try to present my initial idea here in a non-scholarly way as I had originally intended.** 

The original "evolutionary" theory of morality is this. The claim is that there is no intrinsic value to morality, i.e. morality is not something that's good only for its own sake: morality is good only insofar as it contributes to the reproductive fitness of human beings as a group.*** The very rough idea is that if you assume there are two types of human beings in the world: (1) moral, altruistic ones versus (2) immoral, selfish ones, Group A with more moral individuals will have more reproductive fitness than Group B with more selfish individuals.

The red dots represent altruistic/moral individuals, while the blue dots represent the selfish/immoral individuals. The claim is that Group A (with moral individuals) is more likely to survive through natural selection. 

Why is this so? What is the evidence? One good reason that can be given is that such a picture of morality seems to best explain a lot of the following phenomena:

• Altruism and selfishness (or moral and immorality) is found across all societies. 
• Feelings about right and wrong (i.e. conscience) are universally found across cultures. 
• The apparent lack of a rational basis for morality. For instance, it is difficult to give a good fundamental reason for doing something morally than not. Also, how often do you feel that there are just no right answers to certain moral debates, regardless of by how much our scientific knowledge will advance?
• Why our conscience seems to emerge "naturally" like our ability to develop thought. Just think how feelings of guilt and compassion (can) emerge in humans without learning.

The plausibility of the "evolutionary" picture of morality lends support to the view that it is indeed representative of how the world really is. Interesting, such a picture of morality also fits well into the "Stag Hunt" example in Game Theory. The Stag Hunt example illustrates a situation where two individuals are always better off if they work together: if Jack and Jill go hunting separately (defect), they'll only manage to catch a rabbit each; if they cooperate and hunt together, they'll be able to catch a whole stag (which we'll assume that half a stag is way better than one rabbit). 

This table shows that cooperating is always the best outcome for the two individuals in a Stag Hunt game. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Analogously, in the evolution story, what seems to have arisen is that individuals are always better off  together if they act morally. This includes not killing or injuring each other and not to act in ways which endanger the whole group (which is why we hate traitors). This is why Group A is more likely to survive than Group B: acting cooperatively increases their survival chances. 

Quick note: the reason why we still have selfish and evil individuals now may be due to the fact that the system fails to effectively "prune" the free-riders and those who are good at cheating. It's not difficult to see how living in a group large enough and possessing cheating skills good enough prevents these guys from being kicked out of the group. They get to enjoy the benefits of being in a moral society without being moral themselves.

But that's enough about evolution. IF this picture is true - what does all this say about morality? Should we be moral, just because we are born with a conscience? I suppose what all this tells us - if it is true - is that if we really want to fit a picture of morality with the rest of our knowledge about the world (particularly, scientific knowledge), we might need to resort to treating morality as something that is great as a means to an end. Psychologically, believing in this picture may lead us to treat morality less seriously, and we'll be worse off because society as a whole may become more selfish. To some extent, the "moral fabric" of society - what keeps humans working well together - relies most humans on NOT believing in this picture, grounding morality on something like "natural rights" or religion. 

Hey, isn't this an example where "ignorance (of some) is bliss (for everyone)"?

Speculative? Blasphemous? No, I don't think one post is enough to give a very comprehensive discussion of this fascinating issue. In a further post, I shall talk about Gyges' Ring and how this picture of morality fits into the story. 

*See this primer on Evolutionary Psychology by Cosmides and Tooby.

**Not to be mistaken as indicating my laziness to cite and quote /_/ 

***Reproductive fitness is measured by the number of offsprings. 

Potentially good idea: eliminating the a priori/a posteriori distinction

This is going to be one of those posts where I propose an unorthodox and highly radical idea and I give a completely insufficient and non-robust defense of it. I think I attempted something similar with moral realism in one of my previous posts before. This time, it's on the a priori/a posteriori distinction.

Typically the a priori/a posteriori distinction is understood as applying to propositions: an a priori proposition is one where its truth is knowable independent of (or prior to) experience. Philosophers usually point to propositions in geometry and mathematics, such as 'the internal angle of a triangle is equivalent to the angle of a straight line' or '2 is the positive square root of 4' for examples of a priori propositions. 

Conversely, an a posteriori proposition is one where its truth is knowable in virtue of experience. The proposition that 'Black swans exist in Australia' is an example of an a posteriori proposition, as one can only find out whether this proposition is true by visiting Australia and checking if there really are black swans in Australia. Claims made in the natural sciences are generally a posteriori.*

Now, this distinction may seem pretty unproblematic at first, for it's pretty obvious what most propositions fall under which category under the distinction. This distinction is also uncontroversial (for what I know), as it is so often used in arguments even in contemporary philosophy. But as long as the definitions of a priori and a posteriori I stated above are used, I think the distinction is problematic because it is based on the notion of experience.

Why is the notion of experience a problem? The reason why I think it causes problems for the distinction is our uncertainty of what experience refers to when we ask the question of 'what is experience'. Let's look at two possible definitions of the word:

1. Experience refers to what is felt, seen, heard, tasted or smelled, i.e. information available to the five senses)
2. Experience refers to whatever that is made available to the consciousness.

In general, the use of the distinction inclines towards the understanding of experience as in (1). With (1), however, you can get some pretty awkward results. Firstly, if experience is whatever that is available to the five senses, and assuming that the five senses are the only inputs to a person's experience, wouldn't it follow that all propositions are a posteriori? (Otherwise, where would the new data for the proposition come from?) Think about geometry: how do we come to have a concept of circle, or a line? Aren't they initially abstracted from the things we perceive with our five senses in the world? If there is no such thing as an a priori input, then what does the distinction mean at all?

The sun (left) and a circle (right): is it not a better explanation to say that the circle is abstracted from a natural object like the sun, then to say that we are born innate with the concept of a circle? (Left photo taken from Oia, Santorini)

Perhaps - as an immediate reaction - you're thinking about something like this: no, it's not like that; this understanding of the mind is too simplistic. Instead, one should think of the mind as having the five inputs but these five inputs are constrained by the structure of the mind. In other words, (under this view) there is no pure untainted inputs that we can get from our experience; the structure of mind make our percepts a certain way. For instance, without the mental structure that allows us to categorise things, we would not be able to individuate between things and hold the concept of a circle as an object. Without the innate principles of logical inference, we cannot infer that if P & Q is true, then P is true. In that case, you may argue that there are actually six senses: smell, vision, hearing, touch, taste and the innate structure of the mind which constrains and structures these senses. While the very last sense may seem very different from the rest, it is nonetheless an input because it contributes to our total knowledge. To end this rejoinder: if we do have six different types of input, then the a priori/a posteriori is still meaningful under definition (1). 

My second problem is this: if I am to take the view of the mind made by this rejoinder, then ultimately I will have to resort to definition (2). If every input into our mind from the five senses are cross-influenced by the sixth input into our mind, then in what sense does it mean when we say that we can classify the truth of propositions into ones knowable independent of experience and ones knowable in virtue of experience? If the innate mental structure input is part our experience, what does it mean to distinguish between a priori and a posteriori?

Picture according to definition (2) of experience

At first glance, I think my argument would most likely be rebutted by analysing the word knowable in the definition. Does that really improve the situation? I'll get to this in another post. 

*For a more detailed introduction on the distinction, I'd recommend David Papineau's (2012) book Philosophical Devices, Chapter 4.3. For now, my brief explication should be sufficient.

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Some Reflections on Philosophical Work: Fruits and Purposes

I am now typing up this post at the Dubai International Airport, as I wait for my transit flight. It's a three hour wait approx., and I thought that it's about time I do some serious 'teleological' reflection.

If you've read a good sample of my other posts in this blog before, you may find this more 'personal' (or less dry and boring, as I occasionally am aware of are adjectives that can aptly apply to my other posts). So hopefully this would be a change for good. But let me first post a brief update on what I've been doing. At this point, I've:

• just spent ten weeks in London on a taught Master's programme in Philosophy,
• (and as a result of that) spent a huge sum of money which may be better off invested in a randomly selected stock from the FTSE;
• remained effectively unemployed and made little progress in developing any substantial career plans;
• on a more positive note, learnt about the philosophical issues and debates which crop up in the fields of psychology and biology. (under the heading philosophy of psychology and philosophy of biology)

So perhaps the thing that's bugging me is this: what exactly have I been trying to do? I know I'm trying to learn and engage myself in these interesting philosophical debates as possible, but what good is all that? Let's say I'm not in it for the money; let's say I'm doing these intellectual pursuits to create new knowledge for mankind. But what good is philosophy of psychology to the field of psychology, and what good is philosophy of biology to the field of biology? If I am neither a practicing psychology nor biologist, then is what I do purely for the satisfaction of my own curiosity? In that case, it would seem awfully selfish of me to spend so much money (originally belonging to people who funded my degree out of love) and time where the only reward is my pleasure.

Maybe I'm just thinking about the quote that's often attributed to Richard Feynman, that "philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." But I think the worry goes deeper. If all of philosophy is like that (i.e. pretty damn useless), then I do kind of feel like I'm just climbed many rankings on the World's Biggest Idiots for spending so much time thinking about these philosophy problems.

There are two obvious strategies to get out of this pessimistic whatever-you-call-it. First, it's always more-or-less comforting to cite the instrumental advantages of doing philosophy, e.g. enhanced ability to talk about a wide range of subjects, improved critical thinking abilities, knowledge of the history of ideas and so on. But even so, all of this doesn't seem to warrant the time and money spent doing philosophy - if these are the only rewards of philosophy - because it seems pretty probable that you can get such abilities or knowledge cheaper and quicker by other means. Hence, I'm going to need a more 'robust' purpose for what I do.

The second strategy then, is to stubbornly insist that there's nothing wrong with investing in an activity that is intrinsically valuable, or an activity that is good even if it brings no other obvious reward. An example of this - maybe - is sex; people enjoy and have no problem doing it, even if it's not for some higher purpose. Personally I'm not too keen on justifying doing philosophy by comparing it to sex, but this strategy seems somewhat just better than the first one. Maybe a better parallel is music, which people really enjoy for its own sake; but I can't say for sure if music students do not sometimes ponder or doubt the purposes of their undertakings.

OR maybe - philosophy can really yield 'solid' intellectual fruits. It's probably true that philosophy may not produce any 'positive' knowledge like Newton's Three Laws. But if you see philosophy as the activity of conceptual analysis, then you can still get 'negative' knowledge by eliminating problematic concepts and bad inferences. You probably won't ever end up with a really good model or theory about anything in philosophy, but all the critical and analytical work can help you identify WHAT would not be a good model/theory. Perhaps then, this could be a really good motivation for philosophy besides its 'pleasure' value.

...But how well can philosophy SHOW beyond question the falsity of theories? If it leaves plenty of room for debate, then one may as well accept philosophy to be merely a 'fun intellectual activity for ages 3 or above'...

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Six Reasons Why Philosophy Can Be Frustrating

Philosophy can be really frustrating sometimes. Here are six reasons why.

1. It just seems that some philosophy problems are created (ex nihilo as well) just for having something to be frustrated about. The naming problem in the philosophy of language seems to be one of them: this is the problem where philosophers fret about how do proper names ('Socrates', 'Obama') refer to the bearers of these names. "They just do" obviously isn't a good enough answer for philosophers. In cases such as this, a philosophy student has to sometimes try to care about how pressing the problem is. Perhaps it's not altogether a ridiculous question to ask, if you frame the question as a sub-question which will tell us more about the nature of our thoughts; but unless you bear in mind the ultimate purpose of the question, philosophy can get quite tiresome. 

2. It seems that some philosophers are just missing the point. Take the vagueness problem as an example: this is the one where philosophers wonder whether 'Peter is tall' is a true or false statement when applied to Peter, whose height is just between what you would typically call 'tall' and 'short'. Some philosophers think it's a problem because if you answer that Peter is both 'tall' and 'short', you would end up with a contradiction (p ^ ¬p). In my view, this problem does not arise when you consider how language is used (e.g. you assume that 'tall' is used relative to a conventional standard of tallness) or reject the idea that sentences can only be either true or false; this is a problem for how logic can encounter difficulties in modelling reason, and not a genuine real problem inflicting the universe. I don't believe many philosophers actually conceive of the problem in the latter view, but there isn't a very strong impression on me that there is an acknowledgement in the discourse that the problem ought to be treated in such a way. There are many other examples, especially in the area of metaphysics, where often little attention is paid to how people use language, and the nature of the discipline itself. 

3. Philosophers often use problematic concepts in arguments without coming up with an account first. I know it is is impractical to give a full account of all the fundamental concepts in presenting an argument, but this nonetheless does "grind gears". This includes the following: the correspondence theory of truth, the bivalent view of truth, the notion of knowledge (hardly it is clear what knowing means, especially in philosophy of mind and psychology), the thesis that there exists real moral truths and the notion of reference. Although one can foresee asking philosophers to be more elaborate means longer and duller philosophy texts, this seems to be a necessary evil that philosopher students have to bear with. 

4. Very often it feels that no philosophical progress (if there's such a thing) can be made without hammering at the "pillars" of your belief. I suppose this is connected to the third point; you cannot make significantly more satisfying arguments without changing how you understand the very basic concepts. This is similar to what is achieved in the cognitive revolution, the movement in analytic philosophy and the movement in pragmatism. Perhaps this is the less frustrating of the five problems; if you are given enough space and support to think freely, this can actually be a very strong motivation for doing philosophy. 

5. It's always difficult answering the question "what did you learn?" from a philosophy discourse. While you may learn as a by-product certain factual information (e.g. that Hesperus and Phosphorus are other names for the planet Venus), since most of philosophy is non-factual it seems hard to say that you've actually learnt anything. Soft skills, perhaps? But we do want to say that philosophy is good in itself, not just good for something else. But do we really want to say that "I haven't actually learnt anything from philosophy, but it's all good fun"? 

6. When there's too much quoting and history going on. Maybe I'm wrong, but I find it unhelpful if there is a significant amount of quoting and history going on in an argumentative piece of philosophy text. It's certainly interesting to set the background, but it's not clear what has been stipulated necessarily has to re-appear in what you stipulate, especially when the historical context does not affect the soundness of your argument. This is partly why I didn't like how some political philosophy courses go about - why must you say that Edmund Burke argued that 'traditions are valuable' when you can give the same argument independently? This is the exceptional case when I find an additional meta-level of thinking less appropriate: arguing a case just seems more satisfying than examining how a case has been argued. Arguing a case is a job for philosophy, but examining how a case has been argued is a job for the history of philosophy. 

Not that these problems will stop me from doing philosophy, but becoming aware of the source of these frustrations help me reinstate my motivations. 

Nick Pappers on Philosophy, Poetry and the Individual

Are philosophers and poets (or artists) really that different?

Do the differences really boil down to subjective and objective "perspectives"?

This really fascinating interview of Nikolas Pappers by BOMB Magazine [LINK] pushes us to reflect on the aims and nature of philosophy, art, poetry, and our existence. There's a good amount of Plato and Nietzsche in there too, if you're interested.

A Few of My Favourite 3AM Philosopher Interviews

A few of my favourite 3AM Philosopher Interviews
(Last updated 19/11/2013)


With Gillian Russell [LINK]
I'm always most interested in knowing how philosophers answer Richard Marshall's first question of 3AM interviews, which asks them why they've decided to become philosophers. In this case, I loved how Gillian gave a simple down-to-earth answer to the question (which I would probably give something similar myself). She also made a good point: there are always going to be stressful days (no matter what you do), but it's the promise of the initial fascination (with a career or subject) returning that gets you through.

Like Gillian, my interest in philosophy of language (and in general, philosophy which draws from the empirical sciences) stems from the initial motivation that they are more tractable than other areas, such as ethics and aesthetics.

The interview includes a good introduction to a good few philosophy of language topics (analytic-synthetic distinction, Quine/Carnap debate).

With Nickolas Pappas [LINK]

With Amie Thomasson [LINK]
This interview reminds me that there are philosophers out there who are working on common sense metaphysics. The queerness of metaphysical questions and theories can sometimes make you feel that the entire metaphysics enterprise is just misdirected, confused and ultimately fruitless. That's when the link from metaphysics to common sense is all the more valuable, so we remember why we started off the inquiry in the first place.

Beyond Logic

Before I was introduced to the world of academic philosophy, I used to entertain the following idea quite often: there are always things in this world that we don't know about or cannot understand, given our limited capacities. From that, I skipped carelessly to the conclusion: anything is possible. For how can you say for sure that a certain phenomenon (e.g. that ghosts exist) is impossible, when it could just be a case where you failed to know enough?

When I began venturing into 'professional' philosophy, the answer to my question seemed immediately obvious: logic. Anything is possible, except for that which is forbidden by logic. For example, a ball cannot be black or white all over, we can never draw a square circle, and a triangle can never have four sides.

I admit that I wasn't a rigorous thinker. I couldn't think of examples such as these at the time. But for some reason, I was not 'psychologically' convinced. For instance, I would hesitate if someone asked me to bet me and my family's life (say for a million dollars) that it is impossible to draw a square circle, or that it is impossible to find a married bachelor. I wouldn't take that action. If it is as William James says - that belief is measured by action - then you can certainly come to the absurd conclusion that I don't believe in logic.

You may say that it is irrational not to place such a bet, or that I suffer from an extreme inferiority complex with respect to my intellect. After all, it does seem more of a psychological issue that I am so unconfident in my ability to reason. But let me just push this a little further:

Why can't we have ideas or existing things which are beyond what logic permits? What makes us always right? If it is possible for us to get a mathematical proof wrong, why is it not possible for us to get the more basic bits wrong? In other words, why must we have certain things which are necessary?

To solve this problem, I find it useful to see logic as as a model.

If logic, like mathematics, is a tool to model the universe around us, then the results it generates are fallible. Just like how classical macroeconomics models have failed to predict stagflation, logic - as a model - can fail to predict about facts of the universe. And when logic (as a language) fails, we get paradoxes, such as the Liar Paradox*. So maybe within logic, there are things which are necessary, and not everything is possible. But we shouldn't expect that if something is forbidden by logic, it cannot exist in any form in real life. (there's this famous demonstration where someone 'showed' that a triangle can have three right angles by drawing it on a non-Euclidean space - e.g. a basketball)

I certainly don't mean that we should be expecting to be able to find a married bachelor anytime soon. But I'm still sceptical as meanings of the words 'bachelor' and 'married' can shift in real life. Also, it needs to be said that all reasoning (including my train-of-thought as I write this entry) is captured by logic - if not logic, then grammar, or syntax. Anything illogical is very likely going to be meaningless, since logic plays a very important part in our thoughts (not everything illogical is meaningless - just think of how comedy often makes use of logical contradictions).

Hence, it's not crazy to be sceptical about whether logic tells us everything about possibility and necessity. But if we reject logic altogether, none of what I've just written should make hold any force since it relies on reasoning.

*'This sentence is false.' - as Tarski has shown, this paradox remains as long as we use our natural language which contains self-referring terms.

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