Drunk thoughts on Free Will

Uncle Allen is a terrible drinker, most people know that. And I just had a shot of whiskey and the first thing that came to my mind was: I wonder what kind of garbage essay will I produce when I am under the influence of alcohol. I know what most people are thinking, Uncle Allen, you cannot get drunk from simply a shot of whiskey! But trust me on the terrible drinker part, I get drunk like super fast and super easily.

Now let me continue to the main part of this blogpost. I was supposed to be writing an academic essay, but I got a bit bored so I'll write here for a while instead. For now I am only awake to the point that when wriggly lines appear on the screen I will be able to correct the typo, and sometimes I may be able to spot grammar mistakes and change them too. I understand how many break into a heartfelt rant in the state of drunkness, but strangely (and thankfully imo) my body functions in a different way. I feel my mind clears up when I drink, and I am able to think deeply when I am in this state. But wait, how is that different from a heartfelt rant then? Am I not saying what I wish to say deep inside, which I am unable to because of social constraints? If we recognise that such constraints exist, we also agree that we are able to exercise our logical free wills unto our speech and actions. Now if you have read any of the other nonsense I have posted before, you can easily spot that I am not a fan of free will - it is not that I do not think that it does not exist, but it is so little that it is negligible.

Take for instance when I was at the barber the other day, two kids were let into the shop by their mums and they behaved like devils raised from hell - screaming, jumping, climbing and making a nuisance to their best of their abilities, while the mums just pretended to not see any of that. I wanted to confront these lazy and irresponsible parents so badly, but in the end I just walked away. Now, it may seem that I have successfully willed for proper behaviour from myself - to not cause a scene in public for no good reason (not a fan of moral justice either) - but in fact the thought of confrontation has ran though my mind for a significantly sufficient number of times for it to mean something.

Here, I am attempting to question free will at its very base again, does free will control action, or can free will control intention too? I was able to stop myself from acting, but in my mind I could not help but think of nasty and witty things to say to piss off the parents so badly. Provided I did make some scary stares at the kids when they were annoying me during the haircut (bopped their heads in front and out of the mirror and knocked the metal chair handles repeatedly), there was nothing significantly done to express my displeasure towards them nor their parents. All the thoughts were in preparation for giving these awful people an earful, but what was the point of those preparations when in the end, I did nothing at all? Instead of seeing this as an eventual suppression of one's actions, I feel this should also be viewed as a case where one was completely unable to control one's own emotions and intentions. I was not able to be nonchalant and apathetic in the face of nuisance despite knowing that whatever I could and may do was for naught in the end (Even if I managed to make the parents apologise, so what? The whole experience was ruined.) I felt I knew I would not do anything about this eventually, yet I did not, or I will say, was not able, to stop myself from feeling animosity towards these people and thinking about how to deal with them later.

In the face of emotion it seems, that little bit of logical free will we possess is powerless. And considering how emotional creatures we humans are, regardless of how apathetic we - pretend - to be, it is only fair to describe logical free will as a 'little bit' as it is insignificant in controlling what we intend to do, most of the time.

She's pretty therefore she's the one

This started out as a discussion about having pre-conceived notions of one's life long love, one's perceived 'the-one'; but halfway through the brainstorming, I suddenly do not have a standpoint on whether it is a good or bad thing. So instead, I will not present my conclusion and my answer to this problem, but instead the brainstorming process. Strangely enough, it even helped me get a glimpse of the answer to one of the great eternal question of "what is love".

I began this thought process when I heard this line on the television, the rough translation goes like this: "Please forgive me for being unable to imagine your looks before the moment I meet you." This got me thinking, yes it is being slightly romantic and unrealistic, thanks to idol dramas and stardom, magazines and what not resulting our notions of beauty to be shaped... I digress... But if you think about this carefully, we aren't prophets, how do we know what our future partner whom we will (hopefully) spend our lives with look like? This is where the argument starts to complicate. On one hand, everyone has traits they wish to look for when finding a partner, imagine a checklist of qualities, it is good to have a direction when searching, and know what exactly is that you want before jumping in. Surely love can't just be random, and simply relies on you waiting for a 'feeling' to mark its beginning? BUT on the other hand, this part was my original stand on this topic, the quote is trying to say that we should not be holding the checklist in our faces while searching; so what if he/she does not make the height requirement on the list, or whether he/she likes dogs? Doing so is like carrying to the streets a mould in the shape of a human being, and asking everyone to lie in it and if they fit they are the one - some people's list are way harder to fit than simply a pair of glass slippers. In the end I can assure you, one will be either lonely forever, or eternally burdened by the fact that the one you eventually marry did not actually fit the bill. The problems with "settling" for someone (or thinking that you have settled for someone) whom you think is not good enough will be addressed at a later date.

Another problem with having a checklist is sometimes one is not really true to said checklist; as most of us have seen and may even have experienced in life, people fall 'in love' with a pretty face, and they start mapping the traits from their list onto the person. Whenever they do something that seemingly fit your list, you exaggerate small things into sure signs that they are really 'the-one' and convince yourself that this in it is the signal for the arrival of true love. And that sparks another problem, what makes you think that if someone fits your list, you most definitely fit theirs? Combined with the one listed above about it blinding your judgement of potential partners, I hope I have convinced you that perhaps you should put down the checklist when looking for love.

On the flip side however, how can one not have a list? If we do not have requirements, can we simply pick anyone? This side of the argument is self explanatory, so I shall move on.

Also just an additional argument, I feel most of the time people are not honest with their lists because it is morally wrong to be superficial and materialistic for whatever reason. My assumption is that everyone's list is actually way longer than what they think it is, but this part has to wait till another day.

In the end however, I feel the person most people end up picking is actually more random than what we imagine they are, especially if you can agree with me we all have a list - mentally or physically present - and said list lists numerous qualities that some time are not compatible with each other (say you want a fast food fanatic who is healthy, you get what I mean). I propose looking at love as something randomly generated.

Consider these questions: Are everything on your list logical? I like petite girls, for no reason. The list in itself is some sort of a random generation. Returning to the 'waiting for a feel' question, sometimes we feel a connection that may or may not be logical - 17 year old me says "it's all about the face - but considering beauty is a perspective thing, the preference that results in the feel of being 'in love' is random. Sometimes one may fall in love with an act, and said act can too be completely random and out of the other person's character. So even if they fit onto the list, the process of fitting in is random. So when 21 year old me say that "love is what you think it is", I think I'm not actually very far away from there. Love therefore cannot be determined by a list, and therefore I will even it cannot be determined by anything, and simply just generated randomly.

Love cannot be arranged, as it opposes free will - that is something most will agree with. At the same time, trying to determine who you will love and for what and why you love whom seems to suggest there is a way to arrange and rationalise the way we feel emotionally, and even if you cannot agree with me that emotions are random, you can at least agree with me that neither can they be logically determined.

Consider one last thing: If you make up a list based on the things your friends and parents expect in your partner (consciously or not, i will say subconsciously we all have that burden), and when you find someone with those qualities and you fall in love - can you say you have willed and loved freely? Or is it no different from an arranged marriage? If you agree with me on this point, surely the only explanation for all forms of love can only be that all love is random.

Just another list of things I want to write about

I have convinced myself I must try to write a bit from time to time here so that I dun spend too much time thinking about academic stuff, which is not THAT bad, but still pretty unhealthy if all the writing one does is for work. In fact, very simple discussions that occur daily amongst friends are the very things that inspire most if not all the blogposts on this blog. And almost every single time, my first thought after every discussion/ argument is done is that I have to get this written down somewhere, but I am afraid we start to give ourselves reasons as to why we do not have time to do recreational writing. Eventually I will get too busy and disappear from here, and me now will be very disappointed with me then. Anyway, this is just a post to keep track of all the questions I have asked myself so far, and a few more that were too sparked by casual conversations.

1. The Ditto Problem. - The new argument for hedonism seems to be developing in how we think about Ditto, a virtual character in the Pokemon series that spends its day having sex with other creatures of the game until the player gets sick of the game. This seem to add together the oyster and experience machine experiments together. Perhaps I can write a full post on this.

2. When is my mind, mine? - I realised the question of the year: When is my mind, mine? has not been explored on this blog before and I really should write about it. Of course after we finish the Vietnam history essay, we must, because that is of higher priority. Or is it not?

3. Time to whip some puppies. - I really thought I would have something more interesting to write after today's philosophy class, but it turned out to be me talking to myself like a madman in class today. Next week I will be purposely arguing for eating meat and torturing puppies in hope the class reacts and rebut my obviously skewed morals, at least in this society. Will collate some of the replies from there and add them here. Anyway, I'm making two main rebuttal towards Norcorss:  Firstly, I argue his view of morals is highly ethnocentric, expecting all to behave like how he perceives of moral beings. Eating dogs and cats is fine in where I was born, so how does he argue that? The morals of all my people are wrong? That just proves how ethnocentric he is. Secondly, he is in full denial of sadistic pleasure. He doesn't even address it, and is a sadistic person not necessary a moral person? What if he is a great philanthropist that has some form of ant burning tendency? Is there such thing as a scale for net moral to determine whether a person is moral or not? And to return to the first point, by whose standards?

4. Living life like your parents always wanted... - When I say I wish to live a life of celibacy, do I really understand what that life constitutes? Am I simply saying out of desperation because of the state I am in now? What exactly do I want out of life especially concerning the question of love and marriage (having kids and so on)?

5. Spite or Enlightenment? On Singlehood. -When I think about couplehood, do I enter the topic with a preconceived biasness against the idea? Whenever I make up a new theory to deny couplehood of having more merit than a singlehood life, is it just to pacify myself, again, due to the state I am in now?

6. Mashup Time! Free will VS Love. - Do you think people fall in love out of logical free will?

7. Why do I digress so much, am i not answering the question, and the problem with Cambridge General Papers.

8. Dealing with oneself before entering couplehood. - Essentially the core to my belief on why even if given a chance (such a chance is low), I should not be getting a partner at this moment in life. The gist of it is: If you can't even handle yourself, why go complicate another's life.

9. Let's talk about dark secrets. - Not a discussion about my sins, but sins in general. The problem with sinning, concealing sin, and of cause the greatest problem of all - digging up the sins of another. Will begin discussing the problem of using the word sin, denounce it to describe all form of dark secrets that may be perceived by society to be morally wrong, then express my own feelings on why we should not be trying to find out everything about people regardless how close they are to you. Kind of a self-justifying piece I acknowledge as I have a lot of things I do not want others to find out about, but I also believe as long as you live by it, you have the right to preach it.

10. Ethos of a Historian + Why I hate journalism. - Actually an academic essay I am working on now, will post the original with some after thoughts once I am done with it. Maybe I'll even compile and call the whole set of essay the "Seeking Truth" series. Why do I feel a need to organise my different random musings I wonder?

I have this strange feeling I will stop writing very soon after now because this is usually how long my "new blogs" last. Not bothered at all to be honest but will surely enjoy writing more actually. That said, I wish to return with new answers, new thoughts about the issues raised, and not force myself into a schedule to write for the sake of writing.

Athiesm - Problems of being the minority

There are reasons why I write here, in a place where my face, name and profile is not available for anyone to see, because I fear how some of my thoughts may be judged by others. More importantly, how much rebuttal and hate some thoughts may attract, and how many friends I may have to un-friend on Facebook.

Here I am setting a few premises: Firstly, I am assuming people will not find me under this pseudonym, although I use it occasionally in real life. Secondly, I assume I care about the repercussions,  which I may or may not depending on the topic and person involved. Lastly, I assume friends do disagree with each other, even on very fundamental issues like religion, and other world views. Whether they do stand or not is not the concern of this piece, because this piece is targeted at looking at one of these issues that I try my best not to discuss but cannot get away from - religion.

I am an atheist. And to many believers of different faiths, especially the thinking ones, they will be able to challenge my take on religion; and I fully acknowledge the capability of some to even convert me, or at least change my perspective. But I wish the reader looks at this post from a more general point of view, and debates over my religious inclinations can be saved for another day. On that note, I have swayed from agnosticism to almost Christian to back and forth and back here again, so I'll put up a good fight if necessary but that's really not the point.

Consider if you wake up one morning and on Facebook you see two posts. One says "What a bright and lovely morning, thank God for this glorious day =)" and another says "What a bright and lovely day, it surely could not have been the work of any divine being!" On a general level, I believe most will find the second statement rather offensive. "Do you really have to say that"? Some may ask. And it is not wrong. But again, what gives being in a official religion the right to constantly rub their holy inspirations into other people's face? As atheists, we cannot practice nor speak out loud our beliefs because being an ideology that denies religion, the very practice of this ideology is considered to be offensive, religiously insensitive and "wrong" morally and socially. I say morally and socially, both human constructs just as religious tolerance/sensitiveness is. I am not saying it is a bad thing, we do have be aware people have different world views and therefore hold different beliefs, and though we may not comprehend some and even express displeasure towards them in private at times, at least in the public space we should avoid being such assholes by purposefully turning situations into hateful religious debate for no good reason. 

That being said, is this relationship and respect mutual? I do not think so at all. Regardless of whether it is an acceptance or denial of theism, both are ideologies that have their own history, their own supporters and sympathisers willing to defend their ideology to no end. Surely one camp thinks the other as wrong and themselves as right, but as an atheist myself I have backed down as far as I can so to preserve the harmony brought about through religious and cultural sensitiveness. But what have I gotten in return? Statuses after statuses on Facebook and people thanking God for every little thing, which makes no sense at all when looked from thr perspective of my world view? Though not as explicit and offensive superficially, aren't such words of praise and glorification to theism and the divine too, in denial of anti-theism, and therefore rude in the same way as I would say to them "it is that law of nature that has governed how each day would be instead of the deity you worship which I can neither see with my naked nor spiritual eyes"? Flip the two subjects in the previous question-sentence around, is there really a difference?

A final example, if on the two Facebook posts, an atheist and a theist commented respectively "Hey please be respectful and religiously sensitive", which one would be treated seriously and which one seen as a joke, or even an act of religious insensitivity?

The conclusion I draw here if we rule strictly (I will not claim objectivity) on this issue, mutual and meaningful religious sensitiveness requires that no religious topics should be spoken of in public at all, unless under special circumstances such a debate, where the topic in itself is requested and therefore engaged. To proclaim the existence of one God, and to praise said God, although not explicit also claims the non-existence of other divinities and in my case, proclaim my ideology of the non-existence of a God as non-truth. It matters not what is right or wrong in this case, and it matters little which side you are on; if it is a state of religious sensitiveness that we pursue, every time you call on your God, it is rude towards this minority group called atheists, and therefore please stop it. 

I am definitely crazy

I realise for every blogpost I make, my brain spawns 3 new topics in the process. And by this formula, I will never run out of things to write. Is this even possible for one person to think of so many questions? I am surely crazy, at least by the standards of this society.

Yes I am going to use this place to post long Facebook statuses so what.

Ranking Priorities

Re-exploring tonight is the idea of rational free will, and today we shall talk about ranking priorities.

Further musings have made me realised that the previous post on procrastination touches only on a small point of a larger point that could have been discussed, which is about priorities. But as I have always believed, there is a need to ask simpler questions before moving on to deeper ones. So we begin by asking a more basic question like why do we procrastinate, then now we move on to ask: Why do we do things when there are more important things to be done?

On this eve of 3 tutorials 1 lecture 1 test and 1 assignment due (basically all my 5 mods are screwing with me on the same day), I am writing a blogpost. I watched some stupid cooking tv show that was really entertaining. And the tutorial that was supposed to be completed at 10am this morning is still 2 questions away from completion, and I have not touched on my revision on Chinoiserie art. Maybe it is just that I am less afraid of bad results this semester, maybe I am unknowingly prepared subconsciously and therefore do not feel tense about tomorrow. I do not know.

But the point here, IS, I have no idea why am I doing what I am doing. Which part of my free will is determining the order of priority for things to be done? If again like procrastination it is determined by some chemicals in the brain or our subconscious that we cannot control, then is that free will at all? 

I can only propose 2 answers to this query as of now, both of which I do not have proper explanation for. It is just an intuition, I guess (again, where does this thought come from?).

1. The brain is reasoning out procrastinating and the ranking of priorities so fast that we do not realise it. We are making the decision but we do not know the process and simply have the answer - intuition - like how we know 1+1=2 without actually doing the calculation, simply because the process has been done to death before. And like the 1+1=2 equation, most of us do not care why it is so but simply what is the answer, just like our brains when processing some of our thoughts.

2. What I have been saying so far about logic - as in the logic in logical free will - is but a construct. Logic itself is controlled by morals, experience and generally whatever our environment has taught and shaped us, and therefore to be "logical" socially is to be illogical theoretically. Logic therefore has no correlation with free will in this sense.

More things to write in the future:

1. The new argument for hedonism seems to be developing in how we think about Ditto, a virtual character in the Pokemon series that spends its day having sex with other creatures of the game until the player gets sick of the game. This seem to add together the oyster and experience machine experiments together. Perhaps I can write a full post on this.

2. I realised the question of the year: When is my mind, mine? has not been explored on this blog before and I really should write about it. Of course after we finish the Vietnam history essay, we must, because that is of higher priority. Or is it not?

3. I really thought I would have something more interesting to write after today's philosophy class, but it turned out to be me talking to myself like a madman in class today. Next week I will be purposely arguing for eating meat and torturing puppies in hope the class reacts and rebut my obviously skewed morals, at least in this society. Will collate some of the replies from there and add them here. Anyway, I'm making two main rebuttal towards Norcorss:  Firstly, I argue his view of morals is highly ethnocentric, expecting all to behave like how he perceives of moral beings. Eating dogs and cats is fine in where I was born, so how does he argue that? The morals of all my people are wrong? That just proves how ethnocentric he is. Secondly, he is in full denial of sadistic pleasure. He doesn't even address it, and is a sadistic person not necessary a moral person? What if he is a great philanthropist that has some form of ant burning tendency? Is there such thing as a scale for net moral to determine whether a person is moral or not? And to return to the first point, by whose standards? 

Philosophers of History I am going to stop you right here

For a lack of a better title, here is something that popped up when reading about Historical Imagination and the meaning of History.

If I am going to say that History does not equate to The Past, I believe at least half of the people I talk to are going to agree with me. If I say History IS The Past however, I think only a small handful of historians who think the study can bring about knowledge of how the past really was will agree this time. I don't care if I sound sympathetic to the minority but ponder on the next bit a little:

1. Is there any other way to investigate how the past really was other than studying the insufficient, incomplete, sometimes even contradictory sources that we are left with? 

Ans to 1: Well Uncle Allen we can build a time machine, I'm sure they will be able to do it in the far future!

Rebuttal: Same reply, if there were time machines in the future why haven't we been visited. But this is not the point of the debate, now listen to 2.

2. If we are able to build a time machine, and travel back to the past, will we be able to interpret the past while being in the past?

My point here is, I do not believe that by physically travelling into the past, it can allow our 21st century pre-conceived notions and historical imagination to successfully crossover into thinking like another person in another time. By reaching the 14th Century you will still be a 21st Century person living in the 14th Century and the way you observe and perceive this past-present will be dictated by the world view and methodology obtained in the 21st Century. You cannot eliminate this "chronocentrism" regardless, but by using the historical imagination you try as hard as you may to close the gap. Perhaps by physically entering the past one can, with greater access to sources, and first hand experience of historical events, make better sense and construct more coherent (and to push it a little, more accurate) narratives of the past; but as long as one retains the memories of one's life and time before they entered the past-present, one can never transcend from a writer of the past to an actor of the past-present.

If the last part sounded like I am rubbing shit into the face of Anthropology I apologise it wasn't intentional. 

On Couplehood

If this blogging thing ever takes off I'd probably write A LOT on couplehood. Not relationship, stead, attachment - relationship you can have it with your family, stead is just dumb, and attachment sounds like internship - singlehood, couplehood. That's the best way to describe it.

Sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm just being sourgrapes discussing the topic of couplehood, since a good 99% of my own life has been spent in singlehood. The many theories I derive about couplehood from what I hear, read, and (mostly) imagine, do they even make sense? How can you ever hope to understand an experience you have never experienced before. Oh ok I had that short-lived one when I was 17 but that doesn't really count since it was so damned short.

The question I want to ask myself today is, what rights do we have to discuss about issues that we have not properly experienced? What gives us the authority? Perhaps it requires one to imagine, but at the same time we must be able to reason out and ensure the imagination make sense. For instance, if I say I am not prepared for couplehood because I do not have a stable job yet, and I perceive couplehood to cost me more as compared to now, that is agreeable because nobody is going to deny maintaining a couple relationship costs time, effort and money.

If I go on any further this whole passage is going to be in a greater mess than my room, so I'm just going to pin down a few questions here for myself to answer in the future:

1. When I say I wish to live a life of celibacy, do I really understand what that life constitutes? Am I simply saying out of desperation because of the state I am in now? What exactly do I want out of life especially concerning the question of love and marriage (having kids and so on)?

2. When I think about couplehood, do I enter the topic with a preconceived biasness against the idea? Whenever I make up a new theory to deny couplehood of having more merit than a singlehood life, is it just to pacify myself, again, due to the state I am in now?

3. Do you think people fall in love out of logical free will?

And maybe I will write a post about one of my favourite arguments against couplehood next time - on why we should not go and complicate the life of another before we are settled with ourselves. But then it posts another question, when do we know are we ready for couplehood?!

Feeling Good - Life's only pursuit?

Teacher's Day is such a "Feel Good Day". And I'm not saying that it is anything wrong, it is perfectly alright for humans to want to feel good. Mucked around with some stuff over hedonism in philosophy class recently (yes I am an Uncle who still goes to class), and at the very end I feel I kinda buy it though we pretty much destroyed Roger Crisp at the end of the lesson.

First argument, pleasure is good. No issues? Ok, second argument, pleasure is desirable, and everyone pursues it. Probably no issues too? So hedonism draws the difference at seeing pleasure as life's only pursuit; and this is where all the other philosophers go bonkers. Personal thoughts - I cannot say I wholly agree, but if someone points a gun at my head and ask me to make a decision, then yes, I believe in hedonism. Fearing death, the pain of not being able to feel pleasure any more, I argue, is a good proof that hedonism may be right.

Haydn and the Oyster question: Do you want to live 77 year's of Haydn's life or live the immortal life of an Oyster. Haydn's life is just Haydn's life, and the Oyster feels small doses of pleasure until eternity. Well isn't the answer obvious, of course it is Haydn you want to be right... BUT! THERE IS A DAMNED PROBLEM WITH HOW THIS QUESTION WAS PHRASED. You are a Human Being choosing you want to be reincarnated into a human or an oyster. Why would you want to be rebirth into a lesser being? If you are a human soul trapped in an oyster, or a man floating eternally in a tub if you may, will you feel happy? Will you feel good? Will it be pleasurable? Crisp argues it is the nobility of Haydn's life that makes it more pleasurable; I think nobility is not an add on, but the lack of that feeling of nobility will eradicate any form of pleasure that you may experience after.

Anyway I am not a fan of the phrase "pleasure". I'd rather say it is "feeling good". Feeling good sounds simpler to understand and it more accurately describes what this hedonist is trying to express. I need some time to think about Nozick's idea of accomplishment and the "realness" in a life, but essentially, I believe that accomplishment in itself is something we seek to feel good. When your students buy you gifts, sends you cards on teacher's day to thank you for your work and inspiration, doesn't it feel good to know you might have changed someone's life? Or if you are just in for the chocolates, doesn't it feel good to get lots of free candies? =D

Reasoning Procrastination

Why do we procrastinate when there are things to be done? Are we constantly tired, or lazy, or unreasonable? It seems for a start, procrastination is without reason or logic. We know what should be done, must be done, but we refuse to do it without any proper reason. I'm no psychologist, but if it is so that chemicals in our brain are causing us to be lazy when we aren't supposed to, and we are unable to resist that, does that not show that we not always have free will?

The conclusion I have drawn here is that we do not constantly have logical free will. Of course by saying this I am assuming free will is logical, which is an argument for another day because really I am just assuming and I have no concrete defence for that statement. But perhaps we all can agree that we all sometimes do things on random? There are gaps between one's intention and later actions that do not match up? If they are unexplainable by psychologists then these actions are random; and if they can be, then it means we do not have control over them - uncontrollable by logic and reason, again random. Maybe I need to engage a lawyer on this but, how does the court deal with random actions? Oh right the tens of thousands of false psychological reports we see in dramas.

In the end, I will argue for two things. Firstly, one has to admit we are not in control all the time and therefore not morally responsible for some actions. Secondly, thought in itself is not always logical. Faith, for instance, seems to be an exception as argued by many - and I believe today's musings will help me understand (the un-understandable) faith one day.

Also I need to one day reason out why I like to digress and draw far-fetched conclusions so much.

New Blog

Starting a new blog because basically I have nowhere else to write these things and no one else to say them to.