On the Scarcity of Mental Space

I had a phase in my life where I regularly experienced an anxiety: that my mind was disproportionately occupied by things that are trivial and do not matter (such as housework).* The starting position is that my finite mental effort is being expended on thoughts and problems which, when being thought about, brings about the minimal amount of utility or meaning to my life. These would mostly be general thoughts about certain subjects, such as:

• Utilities and bills
• Shopping, groceries, and meals
• Housemate is not doing his / her fair share of housework
• I cannot find my favourite t-shirt
• I need a haircut
• My computer Desktop is a complete mess
• I have too many unread books
• How much money am I saving each month

Reviewing this list, it seems clear that there is something in common between these trivial thoughts: they tend to either have something to do with the domestic, or are related to the desire to be tidy and organised. This list may somewhat reflect on my personality as being somewhat obsessive with tidiness, but it is entirely possible that one may have an entirely different list of unproductive thoughts e.g. unhappy or envious thoughts triggered by social media, or something like "my annoying neighbour has a much better car than I do". In any case, what I had been experiencing at the time was a genuine frustration that these useless, unproductive thoughts were like mindless termites chomping away at my precious time.

I believed that there is a genuine finding about life behind all this frustration, and I suppose there is no harm putting this in a neat premise-conclusion format: 

P1: My mind can only consciously focus on one thing at a time. Whilst there may be unconscious thought processes (such as the reading of facial expressions) which can run in parallel with your conscious thoughts, it is a reasonable assumption that generally the conscious mental facility is not fit for multi-tasking, say for instance that it feels impossible to multiply 15 x 16 and 17 * 24 in your mind at the same time; you have to do them one after another.  

P2: The amount of conscious time is finite over one's lifetime. This is a relatively simple and uncontroversial premise as long as we are not trying to interpret time as a fourth dimension or  in the context of Relativity. Given roughly 17 waking hours every day, 365 days a year, and an average lifespan of 70 -  the maximum amount of conscious thinking time is roughly 434,350 hour. This doesn't even discount times of the day when the mind is less capable than usual in reasoning or conscious thought (say when a human is aged between 0 and 3, drunk, or on drugs)

C1: The amount of conscious thought is therefore finite over one's lifetime. This is P1 + P2. I refer to the mental capacity for processing this quantifiable amount of conscious thought personally and in my own writings as 'mental space', but I have also discovered that the equivalent term in popular psychology is 'mental bandwidth'. 

P3: Some conscious thoughts are better than others, where 'better' can be taken to mean that is more capable of delivering greater utility to one's life. A more direct way of saying this is perhaps that some conscious thoughts are better than others at making you happy or making your life more meaningful. Regardless of which conscious thoughts you consider as being better, we can agree that not all conscious thoughts are the same. For instance, thoughts about relationships with people who are important to you are (I hope) superior to thoughts about spam emails which are clogging up your inbox. 

C2: C1 + P3 - In order to maximise utility or happiness, we should, as a proportion of our overall conscious mental capacity, maximise the number of 'good' conscious thoughts and minimise the number of unproductive conscious thoughts. 

Having said that, it can be dangerous to go right down the rabbit hole of singling out 'unproductive' thoughts to stop thinking; the idea that one simply alter the proportion of one's thoughts should ring alarm bells. I think the solution to the problem comes in two parts. 

The first part of the solution to remedying my frustration is that I could accept these thoughts and worries as a necessary part of life and view them as one of the necessary things that you have to experience in life, rather than something that I should desperately get rid of or spend too much thinking about. For one, it is virtually impossible to not think about money at all as one goes through life. For a period of time I did actually find this to have quite a soothing impact on my mind, and it made me feel better about how my mental space was being used. 

The second part of the solution, which is also what I believe to be a promising and practical part of the solution, is inspired by the book goodbye, things - on minimalist living by the Fumio Sasaki. One of the central theses of Sasaki's book is that by reducing the number of possessions that one owns to only the possessions which are most important, a significant amount of mental effort will be saved on these trivial worries, particularly ones related to tidying. If you do not own a lot of travel souvenirs, you would not have spend time tidying them and organising them; if you do not own electronic devices with duplicated functionality (e.g. cameras, smartphone, and a calculator), you would not need to worry about the additional cables and chargers which little by little take up your mental space. This is a really good and easy read which I managed to finish over a weekend, and I thoroughly recommend this if you have similar feelings that your life is littered full of trivialities and inherently meaningless things. I think there is something truly valuable behind the book's recommendations and how one might live a good life whilst being surrounded by the culture of mindless consumerism. Going back to my solution, I think that one promising route to get out of the avalanche of 'thought clutter' is to reduce the physical objects which induce these thoughts, i.e. disposing or giving away things which do not matter. With regards to this part of the solution it is still a work-in-progress on my part: I have started throwing away all the obviously useless things and bulk deleting emails/files, but already it feels great now that I have made the first step. It won't be a short journey, but I believe finally I have found a promising and practical solution to the problem of the scarcity of mental space. 

*Even now this occasionally happens, which is one of the reasons that prompted me to write this post.

Rediscovering Reading

It had been like an accumulation of tiny changes within me - little unnoticeable pieces of change that took place in me every day.

One day, it suddenly hit me with the realisation that I have lost a capacity I very much treasure: the capacity to read properly.

I realise I no longer read books from front to back. I start one book after another, read a few pages, and leave it lying about - both physically and electronically. Where I live, where I study, littered with unfinished books.

I found that when I read, I had a natural urge to avoid digest every sentence - my eyes impulsively search for the keywords in paragraphs that suggest the section to be most interesting, and start there. When the writing starts to get tedious, my eyes start wandering again around the page. I get impatient when it feels that the author is beating around the bush, and when I sense that he or she isn't arriving to the conclusion in the shortest and most direct way possible.

Maybe it is the Internet, if I have to find a scapegoat for my bad habits; I have grown accustomed to absorbing information in a style where the reader actively searches for the information he or she wants to read, rather than taking it all in passively. If a book isn't giving you what you need, just search for another one online.

On second thoughts, perhaps activeness-passiveness isn't really the issue. Perhaps it is more the deterioration of patience and concentration; the patience needed to wait till the chapter finishes, and the concentration not to escape to another screen as you are reading a book. Since my adolescence and increasingly so by the time I reached adulthood, day by day I had become more used to living amongst distractions - smartphones, e-readers, laptops, tablets, screens, screens and more screens everywhere; an endless stream of messages, emails, and notifications.

Thus when I managed to execute the idea of picking up a paperback book and disciplining myself to read every single line without skimming and jumping into another screen, there was almost a sense of serendipity. It was surprisingly soothing, in a way that reading in such a way gradually channels away all the stress from the modern life. I highly recommend it.

On Hausarbeit

How much time do we spend on doing housework over a lifetime? (A very mundane subject, I'm aware - but the general concept of work / labour is something that I have become very interested in lately)

Instead of going down the good ol' philosophers' route of asking "What is housework", I start by asking a similar but relevant question - what counts as housework?

We can draw a distinction between the more tedious type of housework (e.g. doing the dishes, taking out the laundry, wiping down surfaces, vacuuming) and the less tedious type (e.g. cooking, tidying and arranging stuff, doing the weekly grocery run). A general rule-of-thumb is that we're far more likely to enjoy the latter but loathe the former type of work.

For the sake of comprehensiveness, one may even wish include what one might call 'digital housework': organising/clearing personal emails, deleting useless files on your Desktop, backing up phone data, or calculating your monthly expenditure. But for the sake of simplicity, let's leave these complications aside for now; let's assume we're only concerned with the more tedious type.

Assuming we spend an average of 7 hours a week in total - one hour every day - then that is equivalent to 365 hours a year.

Assuming a lifespan of 90 years, and taking 20 years off for the beginning and end years where (for those born lucky) we may expect others to do the housework for us, we will be spending 25,550 hours throughout our whole life - equivalent to 1064 days or 34.9 months - on tasks like this. Using the same base of 90 as our lifespan, housework on its own would take up 3% of it. Yes - 3 per cent - that's a lot, since it is an activity many of us would like to rid ourselves of.

Perhaps to some of us, the idea that housework is both time-consuming and a displeasure is neither a surprise nor something worthy of concern. One might say that this idea isn't worthy of concern since - very well yes, 3 per cent, but what can we do about it? It is almost impossible to avoid housework, one might argue, as avoiding housework would result in either or the conjunction of the following situations:

• it is immoral (leaving the work for someone else to do it instead)
• it is expensive (paying someone else to do the work)
• deterioration of living standard, with likely subsequent impacts on your psychological and physical health  

It is not unknown in history that technological innovations and streamlined work methods can significantly reduce housework volume, most notably the invention of the washing machine and well-known principles such as 'soak your dishes before rinsing'. The washing machine, the dishwasher and vacuum cleaners etc., have in particular contributed to the liberation of women from their traditional domestic roles and introduced the concept of leisure time to the masses (hitherto only familiar to the well-off and the nobility).

From our perspective as individuals, however, these innovations come neither easy nor often; even if you are a particularly bright engineer, the time and effort you are investing to produce a mechanism for reducing housework itself incurs an opportunity cost. One might also suggest that we have reached such a stage in domestic technological innovation that we are already faced with diminishing returns to scale in the time-savings that we can get with household gadgets.

Taking on the two assumptions that housework is ineliminable and essentially painful, I have a non-ground-breaking two-part solution to the ancient problem of there is too much housework and I hate doing it:

1. Understand the other aspects of housework, such that any work is not seen purely as a means to an end, but an end in itself. For instance, cleaning could be understood as an activity which on its own strengthens discipline and one's identity as a self-reliant un-materialistic individual. Buddhist monks and ascetics are generally inclined to view tedious work in such light.
   
2. Embrace the idea that housework is an ideal multi-task activity for the mind and body. As the body works, the mind reflects, imagines, dreams and philosophises. If one struggles with spontaneously coming up with mental material, listen to podcasts and music and allow your mind to travel and wander, as your body carries out the routine.

One can only hope that this makes the 3 per cent of our lives slightly less meaningless in our pursuit of meaning in what we tragically deny as our meaningless lives.

...

...but what of those who do housework as work?
 

 

2015

The last day of December, the last day of the year.

Usually this is a time when I realise how unmindful and unreflective I had been in the last 300 days or so, and there is no exception to this year.

I can't very well remember how and when the year I started, and if I do recall particular events, I can't say for sure whether they happened in 2014 or 2015. There is no doubt that I could've easily investigated my calendar or email records to find out what events (/achievements) actually took place in 2015, but somehow it feels appropriate to attempt an "impressionist" review of my 2015 - pulling out themes for the year through recalling emotions and experiences that left the deepest marks on my memory and my subconscious. (I'm aware this may sound unnecessarily mystical, but honestly I don't know of any better way of expressing this)

Yes.

2015 was amoral; or more intelligibly - my outlook in 2015 was not to judge actions and decisions (myself and others) based on reasoning with respect to duties or principles, but whether I felt they were appropriate or inappropriate in the given circumstances.

The question of whether an action was ethical wasn't as important as whether that action was 'fitting' at the time, place, and state-of-affairs. What had been done and said felt like they had been done and said as a matter of necessity and fit, and less so a matter of rational decision. I suspect another way of putting this is to say that I had been impulsive, but then I am not so sure if the word fully captures my increased empathy to others who see things in the same light.

I think 2015 has saw me transform into someone much more receptive to Nietzschean ideas, even more so than before.

2015 was also a lot about being more prudent with emotions. More wary I am this year than ever that unbridled emotions are powerful and can be devastating. Once you fall, it takes time and effort to pull yourself back together. Hence - hence, perhaps the psychological "bridles" self-imposed in my experiencing any art forms (I say "experiencing" - read "painting" / "playing / listening to music") were both justified and for the best.

First World Problem I

Recently, I've found myself thinking:

I've always loved ideas and concepts, ideal things... things which are beyond the every day physical experience, things which are 'out there' but at the same anyone with a mind can access. I love spending time thinking, reading, contemplating, and writing about these ideas, puzzles, theories. And yet, the everyday work-life seems to be pulling me in the other direction, drawing me towards the mundane, towards the routine, the boring: bills, household chores, groceries, calendars, commuting, to-read lists, to-do lists, etc. It's bloody endless. 

Every now and then, I'd try to focus and to read, to think - properly, like I'd used to. But one must admit, it does take a good amount of willpower and discipline to 'find the time', or to somehow incorporate these simple activities into one's working life. You're only five minutes into a book, and then you realise there's something meaningless and boring you have to do... this calls for this, surely: 

 

Frustrating it is, yet I am sure there is another way of living life where you can live an intellectual, mindful life whilst balanced against the great pull from the mundane tides of life. I am almost certain that many had, and have faced the same struggle as they go on to write all these great books and accomplish all these great things. How did/do people cope? Is it money? Sheer willpower? Or some magic time-management golden rule?

...

But isn't it almost immoral, to complain about a 'first-world problem' when others are facing life-critical 'mundane' problems, like poverty or disease? What possible rejoinder can I possibly come up with, to this?

An exercise on self-identity

If I were ask you to write down an exhaustive list of beliefs (and principles, if any) that you have relied on for making all the important decisions in your life...

...what would that list look like?

The very activity of composing this list will reveal inconsistencies of beliefs as well as acts of hypocrisy, I'm sure, for I doubt few can train themselves to be so mindful of their own thoughts and behaviour such that they can lead a perfectly consistent one. You might find yourself for instance to be avidly opposed to others consuming dog-meat, yet at the same time find it agreeable to your conscience for them to consume other forms of meat. It's inconsistent, but it's an easy one to miss.  

...Anyway, it shouldn't matter if you realise you have held or hold contradictory beliefs. In my opinion, it's probably a sort of trait typical of the human race that we're unlikely to ever get rid of, regardless of the x amount of money spent on education.

But back to the list - wouldn't this list be a good picture, a good representation of who you are?

What would be the first few items on my list?

1. Always keep an open mind to ideas and be wary of ideology... 
2. Let reason guide your important decisions, but do not neglect the importance of what your emotions tell you...
3. It is better to be sad, conscious and wise than to be ignorant, happy and living a 'programmed' life...

I very quickly realise that these beliefs and principles are - to some extent - what I aspire to adhere to, than ones which I actually use to guide my decisions in life.

And then I think, had this list been completed, how accurate would it be as a representation of me?

Maybe that's another way of asking, how well do I know myself?

Note to self: when I do find the time at some point, I'll definitely finish off that list and post it on here. 

Repost: On Melancholy

"Melancholy is a species of sadness that arises when we are open to the fact that life is inherently difficult and that suffering and disappointment are core parts of universal experience. It’s not a disorder that needs to be cured. Modern society tends to emphasise buoyancy and cheerfulness. But we have to admit that reality is for the most part about grief and loss. The good life is not one immune to sadness, but one in which suffering contributes to our development."

http://www.thebookoflife.org/in-praise-of-melancholy/


A really enlightening read.

This site almost makes me feel that if I had to write anything as a form of  'philosophical consolation', I would be adding zero value to the Internet.

Is our society in moral decline?

We're in moral decline: this is an idea that I've frequently come across in what other people have said, but never gave any serious attention to. 

This is the idea that our society is displaying a trend, where it is becoming more and more open to values and ideas that we've in the past deemed immoral and inappropriate: 

• Being open about one's homosexuality,
• Legalisation of marijuana,
• Increased acceptance to inter-racial relationships and relationships with huge age disparities,
• The public discussion of sex and related topics considered less of a taboo,
• Break down of social hierarchy between rich and poor, old and young

... and perhaps many more others. (None of these phenomena are absolutely global, but are definitely evident in some societies) 

As far as I'm concerned, these 'trends' do not exactly overwhelm me either positively or negatively. I have a feeling that I have, more than many others who are concerned about this moral decline, a better understanding of what morality really is (in a sort of meta-ethics context). (See here and here)

Morality is akin to emotions and bodily feelings: my opinion is that as best practice, we shouldn't let our feelings of morality affect our judgement any more than we shouldn't let our feelings of hunger or lust affect our actions. 

Moral decline or not - for me, that doesn't seem to be a huge issue to fuss over. What's probably worth spending more time on is to analysing the material and (socio-)psychological consequences of these 'moral' trends, and acting to make the best of what could and probably will happen.  

A lull - a rut

It has been a fairly long time since I've written anything in this blog, and it has gotten to the point that I've almost convinced myself that I have abandoned this blog for good. But subconsciously I somehow knew that I would come back once in a while, and publish something - even if that 'something' no longer has any comparable amount of 'philosophical content' as the previous posts in this blog. 

Working a full time job has really brought me to shift my attention on things that - at least on the outset - have no relation to philosophy: finances, keeping up with industry developments, reading the news, household chores, (trying to) exercise, etc. I'm still spending a good amount of time reading and thinking: but whilst before the object of the reading and thinking are primarily ideas, they are more-so now, things. Not necessarily things in the sense of material objects, but things which are practical and 'mundane'. Things which play a bigger role in allowing me to stay alive as a human being, essentially.  

It wasn't so much that these things did not take up any of my attention before - it was more that these things have always been on the side-lines, at the back of mind. It probably shouldn't have been.  

This is the phase that I'm currently on - where these things have found their way to the front of my mind, and have received way more attention than I would have permitted myself before; before - when I was still formally a philosophy student, and more concerned with 'problems' such as how concepts are relate with each other. 

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.