August 10, 2021 | Malaysian Philosophy Society

Value of Philosophy in Malaysia: A Neglected Asset or Worthless Pursuit?

As a Malaysian, you will probably agree with me that Philosophy conjures up images of dead white males in the minds of many, and specifically “an elite class pursuit with zero practical and marketable value”.

Ever wondered why? And how true is this interpretation of the philosophy profession?

Reasons Why Philosophy Is So Poorly Received by Malaysians

I argue there are 3 reasons that contribute to the view of philosophy as an elite pursuit with little to no practical and marketable value, especially to the eyes of a Malaysian.

#1 The History of Philosophy as an Elite Subject

I will first explore the perception of philosophy as an elite class pursuit. The reason why philosophy is viewed in this light in Malaysia is because traditionally, a liberal arts college education was a privilege of the economic elite, or at least of the upper middle class. Due to how philosophy is usually practiced among the elite whites in other countries, philosophy in Malaysia has also gained the infamous name as an “armchair” discipline relying for the most part, on reason, intuition and reflection, involving thought experiments, which are often perceived as detached from reality.

You will probably agree with me that Philosophy conjures up images of dead white males in the minds of many, and specifically “an elite class pursuit with zero practical and marketable value” in the eyes of everyday Malaysians.

#2 Non-existence of Philosophy in Malaysia Has to do with the Malaysian Development Policy

Next, let’s talk about the reasons behind the portrayal of philosophy as lacking in practical and marketable value. The first reason has to do with our country’s development policy. Even until the current stage, there is no standalone philosophy department here in Malaysia – no pure philosophy faculty or department in existence in any of the Malaysian institutions of higher learning.

Nikkei Asia

According to A. Murad Merican, Malaysia as a relatively young nation needs to develop at a fast pace, and hence fields that tend to produce tangible results in a short amount of time like Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are prioritized; more emphasis and funds are being channelled to these fields of studies.

Philosophy and other humanities subjects that are being perceived as not necessary nor essential to the development of the country are therefore neglected. Consequently, over the years, this unequal focus and preference on STEM subjects over humanities has ingrained in us the seemingly unerasable impression that philosophy is one and the same as something that does not contribute to progress.

#3 Philosophy – A Subject with More Questions than Answers

The Writer

The second reason behind the representation of philosophy as having minimal to no practical and marketable value has to do with the nature and method of inquiry of philosophy. Philosophy does not provide instant answers to questions; the usual engagement in philosophy generates more questions than one begins with.

Hence it is easily dismissed as “impractical” and “unintuitive” because this is not the way human brains are programmed to function. We prefer quick fixes to things and mental shortcuts because they save time and energy. Philosophy, on the other hand, challenges us to suspend our judgement and cognitive biases. It encourages the use of rational argumentation to achieve greater truth and clarity in our thoughts. These approaches of learning and inquiry are time and energy-consuming.

I will address all these in turn.

Philosophy is Made More Accessible Over the Years

Regarding the view of philosophy as a pursuit reserved for the elites, it is worth noting that humanities and liberal arts subjects have been made more accessible to people from diverse backgrounds and social classes. Philosophy has also been made more accessible to non-Western countries like Singapore and Taiwan (despite being a small country but with 160 universities and 13 departments of philosophy) among many others throughout the years.

MyPhilSoc

Likewise, the labelling of philosophy as an “armchair discipline” has also diminished. Over the decades, a growing number of philosophers are conducting experiments to test their arguments. The movement called “x-phi” or experimental philosophy, pioneered by philosophers Jonathan Weinberg, Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich in the late 1990s prompted philosophers to conduct researches and experiments to accommodate the cross-cultural or demographic variations in “intuitions” people have. Hence we can observe philosophy growing out of the Elite and “armchair” veils and evolving into an inclusive and relevant discipline.

The Values of Philosophy

Philosophy is at the Core of All Knowledge – Yes, Even “Egg” is Related to Philosophy

In the following section, I will address the view that philosophy lacks practicality and marketability.

Firstly, the education development blueprint in Malaysia may have perpetuated the view that philosophy is mutually exclusive from development, this does not mean that it is true. I argue that philosophy plays an essential and inevitable role in change and progress, but this perspective is not available to most Malaysians because precisely there is minimal opportunity to be exposed to philosophy.

Philosophy Foundation

If anything at all, we wouldn’t have been where we are today if not for philosophy. This is because arguably, philosophy is the fundamental of every idea or concept in existence. As philosopher Tim Maudlin put it, “For all X, there is a philosophy of X, which involves the theoretical investigation into the nature of X.”

To see why, if you imagine all concepts as nodes forming a web of knowledge, philosophy would be the central node where all other concepts branch out from. For instance, at the core of the study of politics lies fundamental questions like “What is justice?” and “What is an ideal government?”. At the core of the study of neuroscience, we encounter questions like “What are mental states?”, “Do human brains operate in a pictorial or syntactic format?” and “Can human consciousness be fully explained by materials and physical causes?”. And at the core of the study of sciences, questions like “What is free will?”, “What are the best methods of inquiring into the nature of the universe?” emerge. It is through philosophy, which is the pursuit of answering these big fundamental questions and analysing these fundamental concepts that we roll the wheel of progress forward. This shows that every field of studies falls back to philosophy at the end of the day.

BBC

Need further convincing? Mathematician Hannah Fry showed how if you hit the first link in the main text of any Wikipedia page and do the same for the next page, a pattern emerges. You will eventually reach the page on “Philosophy” no matter where your starting point is.

This shows that Philosophy is not just important, but also inevitable in everything. Everything begins with philosophy including even “egg” and “marmalade”, as Hannah Fry showed. It may be more challenging for us to “see” the values of philosophy because the changes that philosophy creates are changes that happen at a more fundamental level – the level of neurons and thinking, and these changes do not happen instantly or over a short period of time. But this does not mean that philosophy hasn’t propelled any change.

Philosophical Skills are the Skills of Tomorrow

Next, even though philosophical pursuit is time and energy-consuming due to the method of inquiry, it is worth your time and energy. At the very least, philosophy teaches us to be better critical thinkers, decision makers and problem solvers, and philosophical skills are highly employable.

Philosophy majors are found to be ranked in the top 25% of salaries, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has also shown that philosophy is at least as good of an investment as fields like engineering and healthcare.

An article from thebalancecareers.com also showed that the skills that philosophy teach, including critical thinking, communication and ethics are among the top employability skills sought after by employers.

Philosophy is Necessary for Change and Progress

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Furthermore, Philosophy can offer us new lens to look at current world affairs and issues, and even solutions to these problems. Philosophers have created history-changing social and political impacts. For instance, Karl Marx has inspired renewal of perspectives towards capitalism and social classes and the birth of Communism through 3 different revolutions, Peter Singer ideas on altruism and animal welfare have contributed to the rise of Effective Altruism movement and aided the relief of poverty and animal liberation across the globe, Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum’s work contributed to the use of human capabilities as a measure of quality of life, and Camus’ Absurdism has helped individuals cope with fear of death and loss of meaning in life during the pandemics, to name a few. The real-world impacts that philosophy is capable of creating also further illuminates my previous point that philosophy is necessary for change and progress in society.

We at the Malaysian Philosophy Society have been committed to continue the spirit of these philosophers, creating real-world impacts using philosophy, through the content, events and projects we do. What you would like to associate philosophy with after this, we leave it up to you. But we encourage you to come experience it for yourself before making any hasty conclusions.

Bio of the Philosopher

Chew Zhun Yee is the co-founder of the Malaysian Philosophy Society, an NGO aimed at making philosophy practical and accessible to everyone. Zhun is also a first-class philosophy graduate from King’s College London. Zhun did her year abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, during which she had the chance to dabble into Anthropology, Psychology, Cognitive Science and Graphic Design. Apart from directing the Malaysian Philosophy Society, she is also working full-time in the fields of education and design, and a passionate singer and figure skater herself. Zhun’s dream is to inspire more souls in this planet Earth using original thoughts, written words and digital art.

My taste buds were bland and unstimulated. I could only taste what was fed to me– “knowledge” from textbooks and “recommended readings” to prepare myself for exams. I followed teachers’ and tuition teachers’ instructions religiously.

I was taught that studying hard and regurgitating what was taught is a virtue that every good student should have and the opposite is a vice that should be avoided.

However, I began to question this dichotomy of good and bad, praised and accepted blindly by almost everyone, when I tasted the flavour of emptiness lingering at the back of my tongue when I received my results for the Malaysian Certificate of Education. I got straight As, but I felt empty. I realized that my 5 years of hard work were translated into only a few letters burned onto a piece of embossed paper, which many others also have. And I also realized that I have spent my 5 years of high school life operating like a machine; I never knew or wondered who I am, what I want, how I want to live, and why I do everything I do. My consciousness has way departed from the piece of cert I was holding, and I felt my emptiness grow to the extent that it can fill up the entire space of the auditorium. I didn’t know if my peers felt it too, but it seemed like most of them were either busy sharing the good news with their parents over their phones, or for those who didn’t do so well, they had droopy eyebrows drawn over their faces.

While most of my peers made the choice to immediately continue their higher education, I decided to take a more unconventional path. I didn’t have a plan in mind; I was hoping to figure out my path by letting go of any forms of structures or rigidity. I took a gap year; the decision was doubted and questioned by many, as expected, but I didn’t let others’ opinions take me down.

The Taste of Life

For the first time in my entire life, I tasted the tang of life – it is a little nerve-wrecking, but it is mostly exciting and enriching.

I believe everyone’s quale of life is different (in Philosophy, “quale” is a subjective or phenomenal quality of an object as perceived by a person). But for my case, life feels most lived when I experience breaking my own bubble of knowledge through questioning, inquiring and challenging the status quo.

During my gap year, I partook in a kaleidoscope of activities and ventures I never thought possible when I was trapped in “bad faith” in my high school years. In Sartre’s philosophy of existentialism, “bad faith” is a phenomenon where one refuses to confront choices or alternative possibilities in his or her life by yielding to the values or norms in society, and end up disowning his or her freedom. One of the best discoveries I made during my gap year was discovering the beauty of philosophy. It was through an online course I took called the “Introduction to Philosophy” by the University of Edinburgh. I could still vividly recall the module on Epistemology (the study of knowledge) which got me rethinking the “knowledge” I have learnt throughout my high school years. I never knew that knowledge is “justified” through beliefs and is not regurgitated, I never knew the foundation of knowledge can be shattered through scepticism, and I certainly never knew we could question almost everything in this reality, including the seemingly infallible facts of science.

The Taste of Passion

Embarking on a philosophy degree journey, I tasted passion for the first time.

It wasn’t easy at first, but philosophy opened up worlds that weren’t available to me. I learned to suspend my judgments rather than blindly accept what is presented to me, embrace opposing viewpoints and consider alternative perspectives, and analyse the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. The skills that philosophy taught me are not easily discardable, like the information I learned and regurgitated back in high school.

It taught me better critical thinking, decision making and problem solving. For instance, when I am faced with obstacles at work, my years of training in philosophy allowed me to work through the problems in a logical framework, by analysing the logical consequences of each possible solution and figure out the most viable outcome that minimizes the utility lost.

Many people, including you and I, have practiced or are currently practicing philosophy in our everyday life, from the way we think, the questions we ask, to the way we behave; you are probably just not aware of it. For example, you are upset about not performing well on a task at work or school, so you decided to take a break from your work, practice meditation, listen to some music, and distance yourself from the situation at hand. You tell yourself, you have already done your best, and whatever your boss thinks or how the results turn out to be is not up to your control. Without you realizing, you are actually practicing Stoicism’s Dichotomy of Control – you practice focusing on things that are within your control and accept that certain things are not worth frustrating over with. In short, philosophy brought me out of my bubble of knowledge, and most importantly, it ensured my journey of learning and living is one that is full-bodied.

It didn’t stop there. I wanted to share this joy I found in my encounter with philosophy with more people in Malaysia. I believe the Malaysian education system can do better in terms of instilling creativity and critical thinking amongst the students.

The Malaysian education system, for those of you who have experienced it, can be characterized as a linear model where teaching and learning form a one-way current – that is, the educators disseminate the information to the students and the students absorb them like a sponge.

This is because we follow the British education system established in Malaysia since the British colonisation era. Things have progressed since then, but the pace of progress of education is significantly slower than the progress of science and technology in our country.

We are educated in ways that cannot sufficiently prepare us for the challenges of the modern world.

The skills required in today‘s working environment are vastly different from those of a few decades ago. With the rapid progression of science and technological advancement, it is not open to the workforce to rest on their laurels. It is the eagerness to learn new information and the critical thinking ability to assimilate and apply the new knowledge we learned that allow us to keep up with the constant change in contemporary society. Here is where Philosophy comes in.

I co-founded the Malaysian Philosophy Society with Dr. Tee Chen Giap, for this very reason – to introduce and integrate philosophy and critical thinking into the education system and everyday life of Malaysians.

Taste of Hope

It was during that time that I tasted hope – the hope that there is room for change in the education climate in Malaysia. We have been working towards the goal of building an ecosystem of philosophy and critical thinking here in Malaysia by holding onto that piece of hope since the end of 2016. Our modus operandi is making philosophy practical, that is, using philosophy to solve everyday life and real-world problems, through the content, events and projects we do.

It is worth noting that we are not dumbing down philosophy, rather, we make the already practical aspects of philosophy more explicit by:

Actively analysing local problems through the lens of philosophy,
Translating general questions that philosophers ask into specific ones targeted on local issues, and
Collaborating with multidisciplinary thinkers and policy makers to plant philosophy’s position in the hearts and minds of everyday Malaysians.

I hope, in the near future, we can all taste the local flavour of kemajuan (progress) in our country through philosophy. To end, I would like to cordially invite you to hold the hands of courage to open the terrain of your taste buds to new stimuli and spices out there, for you will be surprised by the new possibilities that are opened up to you.

I would of course encourage you to give the dish of philosophy a try as well. Whether you like it or not, at least you have given it a go.