The Twelfth Meditation, Khronos – The Philosophy of Time and its Implications

Big Ben – Clock Tower of London

~ Our meeting today, my dear reader, is not one of coincidence, luck or blind chance. That we have met today means that we were meant to meet and our meeting could not have happened in any other way. It is inevitable that the past must be as it has been before the future can unfold. We may forget in the near future that this meeting has ever happened but we cannot change the fact that this encounter has already taken place.

~

I stare at my mechanical wristwatch silently and intently. It appears alive as every second is accompanied by a small and fast movement while every minute accompanied by a larger and slower one. From the transparent back of the watch, I see parts of the escapement, a number of its 21 jewels and the movements of its spring that goes back and forth like a human heart. The human heart is the organ so akin to a mechanical wristwatch. Although our heartbeat does not beat as accurately as the ticking of a watch, its movements tell us that we are subject to time and more importantly, that we are alive.

Philosophy is the one thing that is unavoidable for every thinking and sentient being. This I have stated concisely with certainty in Philosophos – The Inescapable Philosophy of Philosophy. Due to the importance and imperativeness of philosophy in our present day as well as in all foreseeable future, our approach to philosophy should be systematic rather than a clumsy effort of grasping the wind (Systēma – Approaching Systematic Philosophy). In the last two essays entitled, Logos – The Building Blocks of Philosophy and Paradoxos – The Philosophy of Paradoxes, I have stated the limitations of human language as a form of communication and the dangers that philosophers face when using it to express ideas. In this essay, I will put forth the other leg (the first leg being language) which firm and systematic philosophy should stand on.

Everything and anything save perhaps God alone, requires and is subject to time. Nothing conceivable by the human mind escapes this principle and nothing will. Even if time-travel become one day a possibility, the interval needed for this travel from present to past or present to future shows that we can never ever escape the chains of time. Like many other things, of which we cannot live without, time is one of the most commonly misunderstood concepts. For many of us, time is conceived as an absolute and constant flow from the past to future that is independent of the observer. In stating so, all good clocks, being both accurate and precise would agree on the time interval between two particular and distinct events. This in reality is false.

Einstein’s theory of relativity shows that time is not independent of the observer and that different clocks would not agree on the interval between two events. Suppose one clock stays stationary while the other clock flies in an aeroplane around the world during the interval of two events, the time registered on both clocks would differ in the future when they are compared. Since Einstein’s discovery, the concept of time linked with distance in space (space-time) has connected time with the relative velocities of those perceiving it. The proof of relativity is simple as it is certain. A car moving in the opposite direction of your own would appear to be moving very much faster while a car moving side by side of your own with the same speed would appear rather stationary. In both cases, the theory of relativity is justified.

Philosophy however, requires more than just the formal definitions of physics. In philosophy, time is regarded as the perception of a sequential order of all experience, the sole fundamental quantity that allows the laws of causality (cause and effect, action and reaction) to hold. Along with numbers and space, time can be considered a priori as its existence transcends that of experiences and instead is the sole element that makes experiences even possible. Hence, if there is one thing that everyone can agree upon with the concept of time, it would be its direction. While many of the fundamental laws of physics are time-reversible (for example, ice can turn into water and water into ice), many things that are subject to time are not. The growth of a tree or the breaking of a glass cannot happen in reverse as surely as one can remember the past but not the future.

Time flows in a continuous passage of existence in which events pass from a state of potentiality in the future, through the present, to a state of finality in the pass. This dynamic view of time can be traced back to Aristotle that stated that the future lacks the reality of the past and present as reality is continually being added to as time passes. In other words, the reality that we know of both directly and indirectly continues to grow as time flows from past to future. Our understanding of reality is then not a static state but a dynamic movement which increases as we and the universe age. This distinguishes time, the dimension of change from the three dimensions of space.

According to Bertrand Russell, our belief in time is due to our perception of change and memory. We see the second-hand of our watch move and remember in memory that the last position of the second-hand is different from its new position. However, some people belief to this very day that time is a mere illusion created by the human mind. People like Parmenides and Zeno have adopted a static view of time of which events are deemed past in one frame of reference must be deemed future in other frames. Both philosophers held that temporal change is an illusion and therefore time is also an illusion. In the paradox of the arrow, Zeno of Elea stated that:  a moving arrow at any instant is either at rest or not at rest, that is, moving. If the instant is indivisible, the arrow cannot move, for if it did the instant would immediately be divided. But time is made up of instants. As the arrow cannot move in any one instant, it cannot move in any time. Hence it always remains at rest.

At this point, we must clearly divide measured time and experienced time. Measured time like those we see when we record, with a video camera, runners of a race can be divided into instances (in other words photos of the run). However, experienced time during which a runner runs cannot be similarly divided into instances. According to Henri Bergson, experienced time is time as experienced by consciousness which is heterogeneous, ever-changing without repeating itself and not experienced moment by moment but continuously. Illustrating his point, we cannot hear a melody by hearing a succession of disjointed notes. In other words, we cannot stop ourselves from experiencing time in the same way we can pause a video recording. In relation to the paradox of the arrow, although we can split the video recording of an arrow into individual photos of the arrow in flight so as to make it seemingly appear at rest, this cannot happen in a reality where time cannot be stopped.

The truth as we know it changes as time changes. For Aristotle, the earth was stationary and the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars moved in circular orbits about the earth. Earth was the centre of the universe. For Nicholas Copernicus, the sun was stationary at the centre and that the earth and planets moved in circular movements around the sun. It was not until Galileo with his invention of the telescope that the Copernican theory was proven. And it was not until Sir Isaac Newton’s invention of calculus that we can analyze the motions of how bodies move in space and time. Then Einstein’s theory of relativity predicted a slightly different motion than Newton and although the difference was small Einstein’s theory is considered to be the more accurate of the two.

Although the Earth was never really the centre of the universe, Aristotle lacked the apparatus needed to study the position and movements of celestial bodies. The invention of the telescope changed all this by giving man the tool to which we could observe the stars and conclude with certainty that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and that the planets rotate around the sun. Time changes not the truth that is independent of the experience but changes the truth as we know it when further data is available for the mind to analyze. Our philosophy must then not be a static state but a dynamic development where continuous re-examination of pass knowledge should be done in order to ensure that they stand the test of time.

~ Ee Suen Zheng

The Eleventh Meditation, Paradoxos – The Philosophy of Paradoxes

Truth and Falsehood by Alfred Stevens

~ Our meeting today, my dear reader, is not one of coincidence, luck or blind chance. That we have met today means that we were meant to meet and our meeting could not have happened in any other way. It is inevitable that the past must be as it has been before the future can unfold. We may forget in the near future that this meeting has ever happened but we cannot change the fact that this encounter has already taken place.

~

Like all human inventions, language is an imperfect tool for human communication. In Logos – The Building Blocks of Philosophy, I have highlighted the importance of language as an instrument that allows human beings to communicate and work together. Subsequently, I have also stressed that although language is of unparallel importance to humanity, it contains certain imperfections to which the meaning of things can be distorted and ambiguous. In this short essay, I will provide some demonstrations of how our human language may be vague and self-contradictory.

Paradoxes are considered to be an anomaly in languages. Central to the concept of paradox is the idea of conflict. One interpretation of ‘paradox’ is a ‘statement conflicting with received opinion’. One of the most famous philosophical paradoxes is known as the liar paradox, which goes like this: Jill says, ‘I am now not speaking truly’. If Jill is not speaking truly when this is what she says she is up to, she is speaking truly. If she is speaking truly, then she must be doing what she says, that is in this case, not speaking truly. Consequently, what she says is true if, and only if, it is not true. This of course, is rather absurd.

There are many implications that the liar paradox reveals. First and foremost is the nature of truth. How can one determine the truth when a person states that he is not speaking truly? Aristotle was known to state, ‘to say what is that it is and of what is not that it is not, is true’. Yet the liar paradox shows us that the truth is often if not always elusive. For Tarski, ‘snow is white if and only if snow is white’ is the truth. Yet in reality, sentences are not always all so simple and a string of written words can be self-contradictory like the liar paradox.

The barber paradox is another paradox that shows that grammatically correct sentences can be self-contradictory. The barber in a certain village is a man who shaves all and only those men in the village who do not shave themselves. Is he a man who shaves himself? Here we see that if the barber is a man that does not shave himself, he shaves himself. On the other hand, if he does shave himself it would mean that he does not shave himself. Both ways, the sentence is totally illogical. Similar to the liar paradox, the barber paradox implies the truth may sometimes be incomprehensible even through the sentence is grammatically correct.

The next two paradoxes arise from vagueness. The bald man paradox goes like this: suppose a man has a full head of hair: if he loses one hair he will still have a full head of hair. But if he loses enough hairs he will become bald. Clearly, there is no particular number of hairs whose loss marks the transition to baldness. How can a series of changes, each of which makes no difference to his having a full head of hair, make a difference to his having a full head of hair?

Consider next the paradox of the heap. With a single grain of sand, you cannot make a heap. If you cannot make a heap with the grains you have, you cannot make a heap with just one more. So even with 10 million grains you cannot make a heap. Obviously we can make a heap from 10 million grains of sand but the sentence above implies that we cannot. Some people may argue that the definition of a ‘heap’ must be defined before this paradox can be solved (since having 5 grains of sand can technically be made into a ‘heap’ with one grain of sand on top of four other grains of sand).

However, a version of this paradox poses a problem. 1 is a small number, and any number bigger by 1 than a small number is also small; so all numbers are small. While stating that all numbers are small is rather ridiculous, one must note that there is no clear point to which a number can be said to be either big or small. The number 100 may be considered ‘big’ when we compare it to the number 1 but ‘small’ when we compare it to the number 10,000. With no clear distinction of a big or small number, vagueness poses a stumbling block in human communications.

The implications of paradoxes are clear. It is possible to come up with a sentence both self-contradictory and/or vague without being grammatically wrong. While the bald man paradox and the paradox of the heap shows us the importance of definitions to foster greater understanding, it also shows us that coming up with accurate definitions for certain things are extremely difficult. How does one define a ‘heap’ or ‘baldness’? Consequently, the barber paradox shows us that certain things that we can invoke or create through languages can be non-existent in reality. There cannot be a barber that shaves everyone in the village who does not shave himself unless the barber himself is exempted from this clause. This means that the sentence should go: the barber in a certain village is a man who shaves all and only those men in the village who do not shave themselves ‘except himself’.

The liar paradox on the other hand, is by far the most challenging of all these paradoxes. Here we must draw a line between what is true in reality and what is true in a sentence as perceived from an external observer. When Jill says that, ‘I am now not speaking truly’, the truth in reality is that the sentence is a meaningless statement that contains no property of truth in it because it is self-contradictory. For the external observer, the liar paradox is good gibberish as it contains a meaning that can be taken both ways, either true or false. One thing is for certain, human language is far from perfect.

~ Ee Suen Zheng

The Tenth Meditation, Logos – The Building Blocks of Philosophy

Cuneiform

~ Our meeting today, my dear reader, is not one of coincidence, luck or blind chance. That we have met today means that we were meant to meet and our meeting could not have happened in any other way. It is inevitable that the past must be as it has been before the future can unfold. We may forget in the near future that this meeting has ever happened but we cannot change the fact that this encounter has already taken place.

~

Philosophy, like a painting, requires colours. Words are for philosophy what colours are for paintings. I have established in my last two essays, Philosophos – The Inescapable Philosophy of Philosophy and Systēma – Approaching Systematic Philosophy, that philosophy is unavoidable and our knowledge and understanding of reality is an imperfect product of reverse reengineering by the human mind. In this short essay, I wish to highlight the importance of languages in philosophy not only for those who philosophize, but also for those who read philosophical text.

Languages are probably the greatest of all human inventions. The origin of our greatest invention is however, rather a mystery. History does not record how our guttural and primeval cries of pain and joy evolved into the various languages that we know today. If we count languages the same way we count species, which is by asking whether two candidates of the same species can interbreed, and in the case of languages, breed communication, the world would contain at least 4,500 natural languages. Africa on its own contains around 700 to 3,000 languages!

It is a mistake, from a philosophical point of view, to think that languages are only those that are spoken and written like English or Mandarin. One should note that languages are essentially a form of expression. In saying so, the old pictures in caves by Cro-Magnon men may very well have been their own version of a form of writing! With that being said, we should treat music and paintings that are a form of expression as a language to convey meanings in their own right. Even mathematics can be considered a form of expression as it is almost universally understood by mathematicians all around the world.

As a means for communication, languages are the most important reason that we can live together as a community. In terms of utility, languages enable us to work together as a team by allowing us to communicate our ideas with other individuals. Without being capable of understanding what another human being is thinking, working together would be an impossible feat. This is evidently seen in the seven wonders of the ancient world, whether the Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse of Alexandria, that would all be impossible endeavours for humanity without languages as an instrument of communication. Take for example how the construction of the Tower of Babel in the Bible came to an immediate halt when God caused everyone to speak in different languages. This gives us a glimpse of how societies would collapse if languages cease to facilitate communication.

Languages are not only a means for communication among the living. The written word enables those who are no longer living to communicate with their descendents. Through writing, human beings have been able to pass down the knowledge and experiences that previous generations have gained. The impact of the written word is often taken for granted. We sometimes forget that the developments in science and technology would not have made its leaps and bounds without the ability of men to build on top of the knowledge of previous generations. Historians note that the one of the most important elements that distinguish primitive savages from a civilized community is the presence of the written word. Without written languages, we would all have to painfully relearn everything from scratch!

Because of the importance of language, it is imperative that we should begin the study of philosophy by understanding its possibilities and limitations. Language consists of sentences that are in turn consisted of words. Words are used to express our ideas that we intend to communicate to another individual. How words are formed is more than just the materialization of our ideas. Many words are in fact concepts or classes developed through philosophy. The philosopher Plato is commonly known with his idea of the ‘forms’. For Plato, if a triangle is a two dimensional shape with three sides, all shapes that are two dimensional with three sides are to be called ‘triangles’.

Plato’s theory is a form of generalization of the objects and occurrences in reality into classes or concepts that can be identified with words. These words are ‘universals’ that denote a property or attribute commonly shared by all members of its class. This is rather confusing because in reality there is no such thing as a walking and talking ‘universal’ concept. People like Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms are people that exist in reality. However, the universal concept of ‘man’ does not exist in the physical world. It is an idea only based on generalization and classification.

The writings of Aristotle also hold many important ideas that we can use to understand words. According to Aristotle, a good definition of a word must stand on two legs. The first leg is the universal concept that we have seen in Plato that is to put the object or occurrence in question into a class or family with all members sharing the same properties and attributes. The second leg lies in taking it out from its class of family and noting its distinct properties and attributes. Hence we can define a man as a rational animal since man requires all the living necessities of an animal while having the unique ability to think rationally.

However, no matter how well we try to define a word, our definitions will always fall short of perfection.

Like all human inventions, languages are imperfect. Every year, the dictionary would add new words that represent new terms that were previously unheard of. Translations from language to language usually adopt words taken from other languages to enhance their own respective vocabulary with words that their own languages are unable to describe. Furthermore, languages that are written and spoken have often been unable to represent their initial intended meaning. A word uttered by a person can very well mean something very different to a listener. Imperfect as it may be, languages remain to this very day the most important form of communication and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Due to its importance as a means of communication, no philosophy can do without language. In order to understand the philosophy of others and to explain our own philosophy, it is an imperative that we should master a language to its highest degree.

~ Ee Suen Zheng

The Ninth Meditation, Systēma – Approaching Systematic Philosophy

The Youth of Aristotle by Charles Degeorge

~ Our meeting today, my dear reader, is not one of coincidence, luck or blind chance. That we have met today means that we were meant to meet and our meeting could not have happened in any other way. It is inevitable that the past must be as it has been before the future can unfold. We may forget in the near future that this meeting has ever happened but we cannot change the fact that this encounter has already taken place.

~

In my last essay entitled, Philosophos – The Inescapable Philosophy of Philosophy, I argued that that the word ‘philosophy’ means different things to different people. However, the importance of philosophy is undoubtedly universal and relevant to everyone in our constantly changing world. Adding to that is the fact that philosophy is unavoidable for every individual with the capacity to think. When we have beliefs and we work to justify these beliefs, we without doubt construct a philosophy of our own. In this short essay, I will attempt to outline some of the stances that one should adopt when approaching the study of philosophy.

Each and every one of us comes to this world as an infant void of all knowledge and experience. Left alone, it is impossible for an infant raised in the Amazons to read and write English without first being thought how to do so. One does not become a Mozart or Beethoven with pure talent alone (although I would have to admit that talent plays a major part in music). Similarly, if Shakespeare was not exposed to the English language, he could not have become such a prominent figure in the world of English literature. Like an empty container waiting to be filled, we must first absorb the raw data of the world through our senses before synthesizing them with our minds to form knowledge and understanding. This process is the start of philosophy that every individual must go through.

Although every infant without mental and physical impairments are capable of using their senses to collect raw data, it is the mind that is responsible for organizing and synthesizing it into knowledge and understanding. As a child, this process that happens in the mind is an unconscious one that the child has no control of. Although this process happens naturally, children are commonly found with misconceptions in their initial understanding of the world and all its properties. This is to say that even though all children with intellectual capacity can think, it does not follow that these children can think correctly on their first attempt. Left unchecked, these mistakes and misconceptions would persist into their latter days and pose a barrier for future intellectual development.

It is common to find propositions that are accepted as being true and accurate in our childhood to be outrageously wrong as we mature in mind and stature. The ideal mission of the study of philosophy is to invoke a conscious process of identifying and rectifying these misconceptions in beliefs that we presume to be true, which are in reality false. As a child, our ignorance may be excused. As an adult, our ignorance is a sign of stupidity, intellectual impairment and sloth.

I believe that it is generally accepted that a physical structure built on top of weak foundations with the use of weak materials is a sure way to ensure its collapse in the near future. Should our structure of knowledge be built upon beliefs that are not proven, or worst, self-contradicting and vague, we can be sure that it will come crashing down like a house of cards. This realization that our knowledge may be an accumulation of a pile of nonsense would ultimately lead us to ask ourselves one question:

‘What do we know?’ or Que sais-je? as Montaigne would put it (he hints that we know so very little).

In order to answer this question, we should, in all humility, subject all our beliefs to the most stringent of tests to prove their validity. It is important during this process that we endeavour to erase all forms of bias and prejudice in order to produce a clean slate on which knowledge is to be built upon. If there is even a little evidence that a certain belief is doubtful, this belief must not be allowed to be accepted as true until it is completely cleared of doubt. But although we should expose all our beliefs and ideas to test their legitimacy, it does not follow that we should spend an impossible amount of time doubting each and every one of them. Every system of belief has core tenets or doctrines that once proven false would result in the destruction of its entire structure.

The Indian philosophers of antiquity were extremely good in questioning their own beliefs to such an extent that Hegel dismissed them as ‘dreamy’ and ‘childlike’. In Sanskrit, the term philosophy also stands for seeing. And at least as early as 1500BC, Indian ‘seers’ were known to raise questions that remain relevant to this very day. ‘What did the universe come from? Propelled by what does a directed mind fall upon its objects? By whom was life first set in motion? Urged by whom are these words being spoken?’, were some of those questions that were asked and largely left unanswered. Hegel may be right in saying that the early Indian philosophers were children. But being childlike is what we should be when we approach philosophy!

We should continue to ask childlike questions when we re-examine our deepest faith and beliefs. Only then can we make progress. Without looking into a mirror, how can one see his own face? The study of philosophy should be a mirror that reflects reality clearly without perversion.

The search for the truth of reality should not be one that is static and dogmatic. To philosophize correctly, we should realize that the process in which we turn raw data, provided by our sense-experience, into knowledge is one that should be continuous. It is a dynamic rather than a static state. The truth of reality over the ages has been seen in history as rather elusive. In the past, human beings thought and accepted that the Earth was in the middle of the universe. This was the generally accepted truth. The majority believed it. The Church leaders endorsed it. And it was wrong. We should be ashamed that it took not one philosopher but two, both Copernicus and Galileo to prove to the leaders of the Church their folly in this matter (please note that I am saying that the Church leaders at the time were at fault and not the Church as an institution).

The ultimate truth belongs to the heavens and no one philosophy can explain it in all its entirety. However, I believe that we can work to improve the precision of our knowledge indefinitely.  To do this, we must understand that doubt is the prerequisite and instrument of reconstructing a systematic form of philosophy.  Thesis and anti-thesis should produce a synthesis of wisdom. We should relentlessly reflect on our deepest faith and beliefs in humility and seek to reverse-engineer our understanding of a reality that we know is independent of our sense-experience. Continuously going back to the basics, letting go of false beliefs that we hold all so dear, broad-based readings and accurate observations are the ultimate virtues of a humble  and professional philosopher.

~ Ee Suen Zheng

The Eighth Meditation, Philosophos – The Inescapable Philosophy of Philosophy

Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom

~ Our meeting today, my dear reader, is not one of coincidence, luck or blind chance. That we have met today means that we were meant to meet and our meeting could not have happened in any other way. It is inevitable that the past must be as it has been before the future can unfold. We may forget in the near future that this meeting has ever happened but we cannot change the fact that this encounter has already taken place.

~

We live in a world that seems to move faster in comparison to our own mechanical wristwatch. Every single day the advancements in technology supersede our ability to catch up with new innovative creations. Computers have invaded every sector and segment of our everyday lives while the World Wide Web has lifted the shroud hindering international communications and solved most of the difficulties previously faced in international relations. Such is the world of the 21^st century, a world where globalization is no longer a fairy-tale dream but a reality that we are now only beginning to comprehend.

In a world where change seems to be the only constant thing, we find yet another element that has remained unscathed through the passage of time. This element is none other than the importance of philosophy, the soul of our intellectual consciousness. Philosophy is now increasingly important as individuals of different races, cultures, personalities and backgrounds interconnect with the new platforms and avenues provided through the developments of information technology. However, these advancements are not without costs. As the world becomes a smaller place, frictions and misunderstandings between different beliefs, social norms, tenets and opinions surface to become increasingly evident, thus showing us, that we require something other than technology to bridge the gap. This is where philosophy is to play its major role.

But what is the intended meaning when a man uses the word philosophy? Every word or concept requires a definition that can at least be generally accepted for the purpose of communications. Yet the word philosophy evokes many different meanings when we hear it being uttered by another individual.

I believe that philosophy lies, like many other things, in the eyes of the beholder. Should we define philosophy as only the particular doctrines relating to some specific individual or school in history, we cannot be more wrong. On the contrary, philosophy is a personal outlook or perspective that an individual has on the world and all its properties either in reality or in imagination. This means that philosophy, as a word, would include more than just generally accepted schools of thoughts like Plato or Aristotle. Taking its meaning loosely, philosophy is one’s perspective of life itself. Having said so, it is not surprising that the word has a different meaning when it is used by a different person.

The difficulty of such a definition is that almost every single individual in the world has a personal philosophy that overlaps with the philosophy of others while remaining distinctively different. As Bertrand Russell once put it, ‘the definition of philosophy will vary according to the philosophy we adopt’. And in a world where so much diversity is present, it should not be surprising that the variance between different systems of beliefs should be as contrasting as day and night. Adding to that, our continuous inability to form similar definitions for the same concepts and words remains a hindrance to a desired state of seamless communication while at the same time posing a source of conflict.

Take for example, how the word ‘philosopher’ is used. Seldom it is that we regard an individual as a philosopher unless that person has written a number of books, invented some famous quotation, or has argued his ‘philosophy’ with his every known acquaintance. Yet if we acknowledge that every man has his own system of beliefs, regardless of how irrational it may be, and is capable of intellectual thoughts, would not every man be a philosopher? At least every man that matters in this world would be and should be called a philosopher! The only difference is that an individual might make for a really poor philosopher in comparison to others.

I would say that it is a common misconception that one must follow the philosophy of a single man, be it, Spinoza, Descartes or Immanuel Kant, to be a philosopher. The word philosopher came from Ancient Greece where the word, ‘philosophos’, was used to describe anyone who was a lover of wisdom. The mission of philosophy is a simple and noble one, which is, ‘to advance the cause of human reason, to perfect its methods, and to extend their application across an ever widening range of pursuits’. To this day, many have risen to this challenge. The richness and vitality of our current society in terms of the proliferation of knowledge stands testament to the labours and experiences of great men in history.

Philosophy must be understood as something that is inescapable regardless of the difference in intelligence, socio-economic status, race, gender and age. Unless one in either mentally impaired or living in an asylum, one would find that he is, inevitably, a subject to the sovereignty of philosophy and all her devices. At the core, philosophy can be divided into epistemology, metaphysics and logic. In the middle circle, one would find moral philosophy (ethics), the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind (psychology) and the philosophy of science. On the outer circle, philosophy includes things that are more familiar to us, including, aesthetic, the philosophy of education, the philosophy of history, the philosophy of law, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of religion, political philosophy and social philosophy.

When we have outlined the vast scope that philosophy covers, we realize that philosophy is something that is unavoidable and relevant in every endeavour of our everyday lives. It is no mystery that a PhD in higher education means a doctorate in the philosophy of a certain area of study. To deny the importance of philosophy is similar to believing that we should not ‘think’ at all. And this we know to be a great folly in a world as competitive and unforgiving as ours. Instead of avoiding the perils and difficulties of  knowing philosophy, let us then rise up to the challenge of being a lover of wisdom in hope that the continuous accumulation of knowledge would foster a greater understanding of the world as it is and a greater degree of tolerance in society!

~ Ee Suen Zheng

Happy Halloween!

Halloween, celebrated on October 31^st, most commonly associated with trick-or-treating, costume parties, bonfires, and jack-o’-lanterns.  This annual holiday originated from the ancient Celtic festival, Samhain(pronounced sah-win).  Samhain celebrates the end of summer and the beginning of the dark, cold winter.  Samhain became the evening of “All Hallows” (Hallowed=Holy) which eventually became “Halloween”. The Celts believed that on the night of Samhain, the boundary between the living and the dead became thinner, and ghosts of the dead returned to earth to cause havoc.

Traditions:

1) Costume wearing

The tradition of wearing costumes was believed to have been able to avoid or appease evil ghosts.  Dressing up as a harmful spirit would drive off other evil spirits, thus avoiding harm.

2) Bonfires

Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores.  Farmers and herders killed weak animals which they believed would not survive the winter.  Bonfires were created by burning animal bones to ward off evil spirits.  Sometimes, two bonfires were lit side-by-side, and people and their livestock would walk through it as a cleansing ritual.

3) Trick-or-treating

In some countries, this is a custom for children on Halloween.  Children would dress up in costumes and walk around in their neighborhood from house to house, knocking on doors and asking “Trick-or-treat?”.  Homeowners would normally respond by giving the children some candy.  The “trick” in the question is a threat to play a prank on the homeowner if no treat was given.

4) Jack-o’-lanterns

A Jack-o’-lantern is a carved pumpkin with a candle placed inside at night to illuminate it.  The tradition of carving Jack-o’-lanterns comes from an Irish myth about a man named “Stingy Jack”, a lazy but clever farmer who tricked the Devil.  The story goes that Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him.  Being “Stingy” Jack, he didn’t want to pay for his drinks, so he tricked the Devil to turn into a coin that he could use to buy the drinks.  Once the Devil changed, Jack kept the coin in his pocket next to a cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back.  Later, Jack freed the Devil, on the condition that the Devil would not bother him for a year, and should Jack die, the Devil would not claim his soul.  One year later, Jack tricked the Devil to climb up an apple tree.  Once the Devil was up there, Jack carved a cross into the bark of the tree, again preventing the Devil from escaping.  Once the Devil promised him not to bother him for ten more years, he set the Devil free.  Soon after, Jack died.  He was refused entry to Heaven, since he was such a dishonest man.  However, he was also refused entry to Hell, since the Devil had promised not to claim his soul.  Jack asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light.  The Devil mockingly threw him a piece of coal from Hell, which Jack put into a carved out turnip, and roamed the earth ever since.  The Irish referred to the ghostly figure as “Jack of the Lantern”, then simply “Jack-o’-lantern”.  Other than turnips and potatoes, pumpkins are more commonly used to carve Jack-o’-lanterns.

 

Modern Halloween still sees people practicing the above traditions, not because of their original purposes, but more for fun.  Halloween is now associated with the Grim-reaper, vampires, werewolves, and many other creatures of the night.  There are also many horror films that use Halloween as a setting for the film, or are shown in cinemas during the Halloween season.

**The Chinese Ghost Festival（中元节/鬼节）

According to Chinese tradition, the seventh month in the lunar calendar is the “Ghost Month”, and the 15^th day of the seventh month is “Ghost Day”.  Similar to Halloween, the border between the living and the dead in thinner on the fifteenth, allowing ghosts and spirits to come back to earth.  Taoists and Buddhists perform rituals to absolve the sufferings of the deceased.  Descendants are also supposed to prepare ritualistic food offerings, burn incense and joss paper (a paper form of items such as clothes or money) for their ancestors as a way of showing that the descendants’ filial piety extends to their ancestors even after death.  This festival is also known as “Chinese Halloween”.

The Chinese Ghost Festival is not to be confused with the Qingming Festvial（清明节, 104^th day after the winter solstice, usually occurring around April 5^th）.  The Chinese Ghost Festival includes paying respects to all the deceased, including the same or younger generations, while the Qingming Festival only includes older generations.

Learning Chinese

Did you know that, including the rarely used and archaic ones, there are about 50,000 Chinese characters? However, “full” literacy only requires a knowledge between three to four thousand characters…

 

Chinese markings dating back even earlier than the Mesopotamian writing system were reportedly found, although there have been doubts on whether or not these should be considered writings.  The Oracle Bone Script（甲骨文, literally “shell bone script”）are the oldest known Chinese inscriptions which are unmistakably writings.  They were discovered on pieces of bone and turtle shell, thus earning its name.  It is a well-developed writing system, dating back to the Shang Dynasty (1200 – 1050 BC).  Since then, characters in the Chinese language have developed over time into the traditional Chinese writing often seen in older versions of books, and the simplified Chinese writing we more commonly use today.

The Oracle Bone Script

Chinese characters, or Han characters （汉字）were formed through various ways, such as resemblance of an object (pictograms), or sound (phono-semantic compounds).  In most cases, however, the resemblance can no longer be seen or heard.  Chinese characters, as a whole, are now classified as logograms (symbols used to represent a word, for example the $ sign for dollar).

 

Based on the formation of characters, they are usually classified into six categories:

 

1. Pictograms （象形字）

Characters derived from pictures and simplified to make writing easier.

Example: “日”, for “sun”; “木”, for “tree”  

2. Ideograms（指事字）

Literally meaning “indicating the object”, these characters are mostly direct iconic illustrations.

Example: “上”and“下”, for “up” and “down”, the character for “up” has two strokes above a line, while the character for “down” has two strokes below the line.

 

3. Ideogrammic compounds（会意字）

Characters created from the combination of pictograms or ideograms.

Example: By doubling and tripling the pictogram “木”, the characters “森林”are produced, meaning “forest”.

 

4. Phono-semantic compounds（形声字）

Characters composed of two parts: the first part, known as the radical, is a set of pictographs which represent the general meaning of the character or what they’re related to (semantic); the other is an existing character pronounced about the same as the new character (phono).

Example: “河”for “river”, and“湖”for “lake”.  Both characters have three dots as the radical, which is the pictogram for water droplets, indicating that the meanings of the characters have something to do with water.  The phonetic indicator for “河” (pronounced “hé”) is “可” (pronounced “kĕ”), and in the case of “湖”it is“胡”, both pronounced “hú”.

 

Strictly speaking, the last two categories,” transformed cognates” （转注字）and “rebus”（假借字）are not categories based on the formation of characters, but more on the usage of characters.  Transformed cognates are characters which were originally one character with multiple meanings, later on separated into different but similar characters.  Rebus, literally meaning “falsely borrowing a character”, covers cases where another character is “borrowed” to represent another unrelated word with a similar pronunciation.

 

A single Chinese character can have multiple meanings and also multiple pronunciations.  Note that Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words.  Chinese characters have a single syllable, whereas Chinese words require two or more characters put together, thus being poly-syllabic, but have meaning that can be derived from the characters they are made out of.  For example, “手”means “hand”, and“机”can mean “machine”.  Put them together and you have “手机”, which means “hand phone”.  Since different meanings, pronunciations, and combinations of characters produce different words with different meanings, it is, of course, somewhat difficult to determine the meaning of a word you haven’t come across before.

 

The funny thing about Chinese characters is that when you play around with them, you often get ironic, but also meaningful results.  Here are a few examples:

 

1. Have you ever seen the Chinese character “福”pasted upside-down on someone’s front door?

 

Well, it wasn’t an accident.  The character “福”means “happiness”, or “good fortune”.  The Chinese character for upside-down is “倒”, pronounced the same as“到”, which means “arrive”.  So when “福”is upside-down, it is“福倒”, which sounds exactly like “福到”, meaning “happiness/good fortune has arrived/will be arriving”.

 

2. The Chinese word for “crisis” is “危机”.  Broken down into characters, “危”means “danger”, while“机”means “opportunity”.  Thus, it could be interpreted as a reminder to see the golden opportunity offered in every crisis.

 

3. The character “饭”means “rice”.  The radical for this character is also used in characters related to food, such as “饿”, meaning “hungry”.  The right side of the character is “反”, meaning “anti-” or “against”.  As often seen in the history of China, once the people of the country do not have enough food to survive, they rebel.

 

4. “不”means “no”.  “可”and “能”means “can”, or “able to”.  Put together, “不可能”means “impossible”.  However, adding a comma makes “不，可能”meaning “no, it’s possible!”

 

So, anyone interested in learning Chinese?

Quote of the day

 

“It is better to inspire jealousy than to have people feeling sorry for you”

by John Heywood, an English writer known for his plays, poems, and collection of  proverbs

Quote of the day

 

“When another is vastly superior to you, there is no remedy but to love him”

by Goethe, a German poet, novelist and a philosoper

Quote of the day

 

 

“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him”

by Booker. T Washington , an American educator, orator and author