Constellations and Self-Confidence

Pluto has been demoted; now the solar system has become the eight major planets.

This news counts as one of the most eye-catching science and technology news items of the past few days, but today I saw a rather interesting report: it said that Pluto’s demotion caused only limited shock in astronomy, yet stirred up quite a commotion in “astrology.”

The ones most affected are probably us Scorpio folks, because it is said that Pluto is Scorpio’s “ruling planet.” I don’t know what exactly this ruling planet is supposed to do, but it does sound like the problem is indeed quite serious…

Pluto being included among the major planets was in the first place a misunderstanding; now astronomers have clarified that misunderstanding. But what about the astrologers? They assigned Pluto such a status simply by following the crowd.

The popularity of the zodiac is a typical case of “superstition” in the new era, and worth studying. There are some traditional superstitions I would even defend, but modern superstitions like the zodiac are something I want to fight against, because these things are indeed harmful and stupid—people who believe in the zodiac are far more stupid than people who believe in bodhisattvas, and the fools who worship bodhisattvas (meaning in a superstitious, not religious, sense) are “enlightened,” while these traditional folk superstitions are found either in the countryside or among old men and old women. Yet the believers in these modern superstitions are concentrated among young people, and their influence is especially widespread among the so-called “intellectuals.” It is clear, then, that the influence of these modern superstitions is greater, their harmful effects more numerous, and they deserve even more attention.

I do not want to, like those “experts” the television often brings out, invoke science and put on an air of authority to lecture at length. In fact, these principles do not require any “experts” at all—anyone can say them. That the zodiac reflects a person’s fate is nonsense; this is self-evident. If one does not find it self-evident and insists on believing it, then there is nothing to be done. One should not attack astrology with heavy-handed methods; it is enough to explain the reasoning calmly. We cannot expect to eliminate astrology overnight.

The zodiac is so popular for internal reasons. Those “experts” may not have much to say on other matters, but one sentence they said was truly brilliant—being obsessed with the zodiac is a sign of “lack of self-confidence”!

Modern people really are generally lacking in self-confidence! They are confused, helpless, swept along by the current, and have lost themselves.

But modern people are also very “rebellious”—in any case, people “think” of themselves as very “rebellious.” They are unwilling to accept traditional “dogma,” reject the control of elders, ignore the advice of their seniors, resist any externally imposed rules, and long for a completely “independent” life. Yet after they have rejected all guidance and help, how are they to arrange their own lives? What should I do? What kind of person should I become? How should I interact with others? What should my personality be like? What kind of people am I suited to associate with? What kind of work am I suited to do? …… Faced with so many complicated questions, people are once again without any opinions of their own.

People are unwilling to admit their own ignorance, helplessness, lack of views, and lack of direction; nor are they willing to put down the pose of a “fashionable young person” and ask for help from elders with profound thought, or from older people rich in experience. So they turn to fashion for help—and the zodiac happens to provide exactly what they need: it can tell people—what your personality is, what you are suited to do, how you should interact with others…… People find ready-made answers in the zodiac. It even provides detailed guidance on what one should do each day, each month, and each year, while “zodiac compatibility” has even replaced the traditional arranged marriages of “matching families and social standing”; even more frightening is that people who let the zodiac determine their choice of partner actually firmly believe that they have gained “freedom in love”!

When I respond to people who are peddling new-age mysticism (I have run into several people who were obviously selling pseudoscientific products), I often say: even if everything you say were true, I still wouldn’t need it! The same goes for the zodiac— even if the zodiac were truly miraculous, I still wouldn’t be interested! I am absolutely confident in my own reason; I myself know best what sort of person I am and what sort of things I am suited to do, and I have never needed the zodiac or anything else whatsoever to provide me with answers.

2006年8月26日

最新评论

• mist

  2006-09-02 09:08:53 

  But it seems that relying on a coin and relying on oneself to act are, in essence, not all that different~~
  This time when I went home I secretly recorded a piece of audio from a folk superstition activity; when I get back, I might as well post it for your amusement~~

• 古

  2006-09-02 13:16:05 

  If one insists on being serious about it, then one can only admit: either all human choices are free will, or all choices are coin-flipping. What I said should be understood in the sense of everyday life; we can all feel that a carefully considered, “personal” decision and a coin-flip decision differ in some respects, or that deciding by a coin toss after careful consideration that either outcome is acceptable is also more rational than making a decision without any reflection at all, purely on a momentary impulse—this is simply obvious. As for whether there is a difference in essence, that is a question one faces after burrowing deep into a dead end. Besides, if those people obsessed with the zodiac could wake up to the fact that relying on the zodiac is essentially no different from relying on coin tosses, that would be good too.

• mist

  2006-10-07 18:56:48 

  Although people generally believe that an action taken after deliberation differs in some meaningful sense from a coin toss, what exactly does this “certain meaningful sense” refer to? Admittedly, a coin toss is an action we actually perform, and the outcome of this action is not something the person tossing the coin can control in advance; thus it is regarded as arbitrary, and an arbitrary attitude has always annoyed others, because acting arbitrarily is a sign of irresponsibility. Therefore, if a person chooses by coin toss, this means he has abandoned the responsibility he ought to bear; whereas if he acts after deep thought, people will say he is responsible. Perhaps this is the difference between a deliberated action and a coin toss: the former is regarded as responsible, the latter as irresponsible (passing the buck).
  But if the word “responsibility” can apply at all, it presupposes that this world must be a nondeterministic world.

• 古

  2006-10-07 23:05:25 

  Whether a person’s conduct is responsible or not has no direct relation to whether the attitude is arbitrary. If one chooses something out of an arbitrary attitude but is nevertheless willing to bear responsibility for the consequences that may arise from it, then one can say that this is responsible. On the other hand, deciding by coin toss does not mean acting without deliberation; sometimes, a coin toss is precisely a choice made on the basis of sufficient thought—I considered the possible consequences of both choices at the same time and judged that either outcome would be acceptable, and only then did I decide by tossing a coin. Such a decision may even involve more deliberation than deciding after considering only the consequences of one option. Finally, the meaning of the word “responsibility” does not necessarily presuppose that the world is nondeterministic; it only needs to presuppose that human beings possess some kind of “free will.” In a deterministic world, can people not have free will? Free will is a deeply rooted feeling human beings possess, just like the sense of the passage of time. Even if one says it is only an illusion, it is an illusion so stubborn that it cannot be denied. Free will should be taken as a postulate of practical reason; it is affirmed because it is necessary. Moreover, even if you adopt a thoroughly deterministic worldview and believe that all your actions have been fully determined since the Big Bang, you should still bear responsibility for your actions, because the responsibility you ought to bear was also determined from the very beginning. What is even more difficult are the problems raised by thorough nondeterminism: if my actions are determined by probability—say my will does not want to do this thing, but my actual behavior is not completely determined by my true will, and instead is pulled along by uncertain factors, so that the responsibility for the bad things I do falls not on my will but on uncertainty…… In short, the question of “how free will is possible” in a nondeterministic world is no easier at all than in a deterministic one. Nondeterminism by no means solves the problem of free will once and for all; this was also pointed out by Popper, Schrödinger, and others.

• mist

  2006-10-08 11:52:36

  There are two definitions of freedom: negative freedom means that a person, in acting according to his own abilities, is not hindered; positive freedom seems not to have a very good definition, and the definition given below is still under debate, but roughly it refers to a capacity for self-reflection on one’s own actions. Yet the distinction between negative and positive freedom is still fairly clear: the former points toward action, the latter toward the mind—if there really is such a thing as a mind.
  Whether in practice or in so-called philosophy, no matter how deeply rooted a feeling may be, it cannot satisfy the needs of either of these two, and therefore cannot be relied upon as a solid foundation. The people in Brave New World feel free, but would you want that kind of freedom? Their actions all stem from their own wishes; one could say they act according to free will. But would a so-called free will produced by administering various drugs and sound hypnosis in infancy be the free will you want?
  In a deterministic world, people can possess “apparently” free actions and “apparently” free will. Whether people in a deterministic world have freedom, I plan to discuss from the perspectives of others and of the self. 1) Since minds cannot communicate directly with other minds, whether another person is free is judged by various external manifestations; and the various external manifestations of people in a deterministic world can be no different from those of a “truly free person,” so formally speaking there exists “freedom.” However, formal things are after all somewhat different from essence—for example, the Chinese room or the chess room: we may think there is a chess master or a Chinese expert inside the room, yet in fact there is only an ordinary person and a manual. 2) As for whether one oneself possesses freedom, in a deterministic world I do not deny that people may have a feeling of being free; it is just that once this feeling is reduced to hormonal stimulation or neural impulses, it becomes clear that it too is merely part of a series of predetermined events. When a person in a deterministic world says “I am free,” to my mind it is like a character in a television drama saying “I am free.”
  Merely because a principle is needed, to set it up as a postulate, while not necessarily wrong, is still not a reliable foundation, especially when the opposite of this principle can also be postulated. For example, the parallel postulate, the continuum hypothesis and their respective opposites; and of course, here, the question of whether human beings have free will. As you said, a thorough determinist would regard even responsibility, morality, and law as predetermined, and thus in his view determinism would not abolish morality, would not lead people to be irresponsible, and would not lead to social collapse. However, the phrase “you should be responsible for your actions” as it appears in a deterministic world and this same phrase as it appears in a nondeterministic one need to be understood in two different senses; the same phenomena can present themselves to us in these two worlds, but they have different meanings. The former is merely a certain sequence of events, merely formal, with no meaning whatsoever, like Hilbert’s view of mathematics as a game of symbols: before interpretation, mathematics is nothing, just symbols; the latter, if still compared to a game of symbols, should be seen as mathematics after interpretation, and therefore as meaningful mathematics.
  I had originally thought I could finish typing this within half an hour, but it looks like I failed. I’ll talk about nondeterminism later; for now I’m going to eat…

• 古

  2006-10-08 12:24:53 

  The question of “free will” is different from the meaning of democracy and freedom: the former is a metaphysical question, freedom in an absolute sense; the latter is a question in political philosophy. What the people in Brave New World lack is freedom in a relative sense, but fundamentally, as Rousseau and Kant said: human beings are born free. The capacity for reflection and self-consciousness, free will—human beings are born with these; people are forced to be free. In an absolute sense, the people in Brave New World likewise possess free will.
  Some questions are destined never to find a “reliable foundation”; similar cases include the reality of the external world, the existence of other minds, and so on.
  The very fact that the opposite of a postulate can also be postulated is precisely the reason it must be regarded as a postulate.
  To claim that other minds do not exist, that free will does not exist, offers no reliable way to refute it; but as you said, if that is the case, then it becomes very hard to talk about “meaning” and “responsibility.” Some things are simply a matter of belief. Believing in the existence of free will is a prerequisite for carrying out discussions about “meaning” and “responsibility.” Just as believing in the “uniformity” of nature is a prerequisite for scientific discussion, there is also no reliable way to refute the possibility of denying “natural laws”; it is just that in that case, discussing science becomes difficult. We should assume the existence of free will, so that we can effectively carry out discussions of ethical issues. If one remains forever entangled in the discussion of whether free will exists, one will never be able to enter into a healthy discussion of ethical issues. Just as Poincaré and Einstein regarded scientific postulates as “conventions,” this postulate of “free will” may as well be treated as a “convention.”

• mist

  2006-10-08 13:52:56

  Brave New World does not lack democracy and other political rights. In a society that controls thought so effectively, even if the people at the very bottom of society were given the power to oppose their own enslavement, they would without hesitation give it up.
  Since the capacity for reflection is not innate at birth (perhaps what is innate is only the potential to form reflection), and must be gradually acquired through learning in a social environment, to be born free means only that one possesses a potential; if nurtured in an appropriate environment, this potential will become what we call freedom. People such as wolf children, who are separated from society from a very young age, if they possessed “the capacity for reflection,” would not have the kind of “reflection” we usually mean—that is, considering whether one’s own behavior accords with reason and whether it accords with morality. And if this capacity for reflection, in the process of formation, is subjected to too great a social influence, then one cannot say that such a person possesses free will. There are two classic examples below: 1) imagine the son of a tyrant, who from childhood is influenced by his cruel father and grows up in a bloody environment, regarding acts such as killing as perfectly natural, and thus becomes even more brutal than his father in adulthood; in this case, to say that he possesses free will is not as apt as to say that he possesses his father’s will. 2) When John was young, he was bitten by a black dog, and thus developed a fear of black dogs. Later, his birthday arrived, and his father (not knowing he was afraid of black dogs) wanted to give him a puppy. In the pet shop there were black and white puppies, so his father decided to let John choose one. Naturally, John chose the white puppy. This was an act arising from his personal wish (his father did not force him to choose a puppy of a particular color), and it was also made after reflection (being afraid of black dogs, he would naturally consider choosing a puppy that would make him feel safe), and it was an action taken without being hindered by others; yet people would find it hard to agree that such behavior arises from free will.
  It is precisely because the residents of Brave New World are subjected to such enormous influences during the formation of their capacity for reflection that I do not think they possess free will; rather, they possess the will of that society.
  If the purpose of research is not free will, then of course one can directly presuppose the premises one needs. However, free will itself is already a problem within ethics. Not to mention that in ethical questions, one generally only needs to presuppose the existence of free will when speaking of moral responsibility; whereas in questions of value judgment, whether free will exists is not all that important—for example, questions like whether the train should hit Einstein or a fool.
  In addition, there is a small problem in conventionalism: if the postulates on which we base ourselves are all matters of convention, then why can’t contradiction also be taken as a postulate conventionally deemed true? Therefore, behind the word “convention” there should be some truths hidden.

• 古

  2006-10-08 14:25:43 

  Human choices are always related to the environment in which one grew up, or even determined by one’s experiences. Why do I say that John’s choosing the white dog was not an act of free will? It is just that we happen to be able to find an environmental cause for John’s choosing the white dog (an incident from childhood), but at other times people’s choices are also always related to past experience; it is just that the specific relation is often rather complex, so that it is hard to isolate a single cause. But if John’s choice is unfree, then everyone’s choices are unfree as well, and any choice will be influenced by experience or by the unconscious. Yet I say that so long as it is a “choice,” it is free, so long as John consciously realized such a situation: I can choose the black dog, and I can also choose the white dog. Such a choice made out of conscious awareness—whether in the end it is based on a simple “feeling” of preference or aversion, or after rational analysis and comparison—rational comparison ultimately still reduces to a feeling of preference or aversion, and feelings of preference or aversion always depend on the experiences one has had in the course of growing up—belongs to free will. Even behavior that has been plainly influenced by society or by other people (rather than merely in a vague, hidden way) still requires responsibility. But in a relative sense, their choices may not necessarily be “free.”

  When a person consciously “chooses,” one situation is that of “dilemma” or “equivocation,” that is, a state in which the two choices are roughly on the same footing. The so-called problem of “freedom = flipping a coin?” is mainly directed at this kind of situation. Another situation is one with an obvious directional tendency, where my habits, preferences, the education I have received, and so on all clearly point toward one choice and rule out the other. Yet this asymmetrical choice is still a choice; so long as one has “self-awareness,” that is to say, so long as one is aware “I” am “doing XX,” one must necessarily face such a choice—I am aware that I am doing something, and that means I can stop it. “Choice” in this sense is a product of “self-awareness,” and thus something that everyone must inevitably face. And those who are unfree, that is, people who lack awareness of “freedom,” often do not reflect on their innate tendencies as determined by their environment, but merely follow those tendencies. By contrast, people who are consciously aware of freedom will reflect on what they are doing, reflect on the direction in which they are walking, and may even resist, changing their innate tendencies through rational thought. Thus, as Rousseau and Kant, and also many Christian theologians, have pointed out: a person’s initial “freedom” must be manifested through “doing evil,” that is, through some rebellion against oneself; this makes sense.

  In addition, if contradiction is taken as an axiom, then it becomes difficult to carry on any further discussion; conventionalism needs to be supported by coherentism. But conventionalism probably really is not enough, so personally I am more inclined to turn back and seek help from transcendentalism.

• mist

  2006-10-08 15:27:53 

  Having self-awareness still is not enough to count as evidence of having free will; this thesis has also been debated. A classic counterexample is the drug addict or the kleptomaniac. A person addicted to drugs knows that taking drugs is harmful, yet he cannot restrain himself. Similarly, a kleptomaniac, though he does not wish to steal and knows that stealing is wrong, is likewise unable to restrain his stealing behavior. They are controlled by drugs (external) or by their condition (internal); although they have self-awareness, they still cannot be counted as free. Another example is what is commonly called being “troubled by love.” In Western mythology there is a famous story of a handsome youth who falls in love with his own reflection in the water and later becomes the narcissus~~

• 古

  2006-10-08 17:02:38 

  So I say that “freedom” as discussed in the two senses is not the same. Earlier we were discussing “free will” in relation to determinism and indeterminism; that is, the question of “whether free will is possible.” You raised the term “responsibility” as depending on an indeterministic world, whereas I think that responsibility depends on free will, and free will does not need to be demonstrated by whether this world is deterministic or indeterministic; whether one takes the world to be deterministic or indeterministic, one should assume the existence of free will.
  And the issues discussed later are not about how free will is possible, but rather about what kind of behavior can be called free. That is another question altogether. I said that having free will does not necessarily mean having freedom; having free will is a prerequisite for a person possibly becoming free, but having free will does not mean one will necessarily act freely, because there may also be situations such as, for example, yielding to what you call “social will,” submitting to external or internal control, yielding to bestial desires, and so on.
  “Freedom = flipping a coin?” is probably a metaphysical question, whereas whether the people in Brave New World are free is a question in ethics and political philosophy.
  But free will certainly is not merely a product of self-awareness. In fact, this point was mentioned earlier as well: in an indeterministic world, if my behavior is not governed by my will but instead is swayed by random probability, then responsibility should be shifted onto uncertainty. Free will also includes the assumption that reason can control behavior. If behavior really is no longer controlled by reason—for example in cases such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia—then indeed one can say that in some circumstances there is no free will, and accordingly the legal and moral responsibility they bear will also be reduced; a completely schizophrenic person indeed no longer has to bear ethical responsibility. But in cases of ordinary levels of obsessive-compulsive disorder, kleptomania, and the like, if reason can still control one’s behavior at least to some extent, then one should bear responsibility to some extent as well.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.