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Check our app for details. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets, I'm your host, and today we continue our series on how to invest in your children at an early age so you won't be paying for them for the rest of your life.

And I think today's topic is especially pertinent to this basic idea. My idea in this series is to give you all of the best ideas that you can use to invest into your children early so that they won't require economic outpatient care, as the late Thomas Stanley, author of "The Millionaire Next Door" used to term it.

Economic outpatient care is when a parent, especially a wealthy parent, finds himself continually supporting his children long past their childhood, far into young adulthood, and even adulthood in some cases. And if you are required to do that, it can be a very expensive proposition. It's nice to do it if you want to, if you desire to support your children, that's a great blessing, but to need to do that is a big problem, and it can be a very expensive investment.

And what I'm hoping to do is to persuade you to agree with me that if you do certain things effectively at a young age, then you dramatically minimize the need for you to pay lots of money for your children's college education, you diminish the need for you to pay lots of money for economic outpatient care in their 20s and their 30s, et cetera, and that's what we're all about.

So we started with talking about the body, how to invest into the body of your children, and we've spent quite a lot of time dealing with the minds, how to invest in the minds of your children. And you can consider this episode a hinge episode as we pivot to the third category of investing into the spirit of your children.

Now I'm gonna use that term very loosely. What I'm trying to get at in the distinction between mind and spirit or mind and character or mind and person is the difference between the physical brain and its exercise versus the emotional self, the real self, the id, the spiritual being that goes beyond the simple physical gray matter of your child.

You'll notice that when I spoke about the body, I talked about lots and lots of physical aspects of the being. I talked about the importance of exercise and of building balance and coordination and good nutrition. As I've talked about the brain, I've been focusing on mostly things that have good evidence.

Let me be careful not to say proven, but have good evidence to indicate that they literally make your children smarter, things that grow the gray matter, grow the number of connections between the neurons and the brains of your children. And that's been the theme of this whole section. Well, now we're pivoting to things that may or may not necessarily make your children smarter on a physical level, but these things definitely make your children smarter on a practical level.

They make your children more capable 'cause we're starting to move into the emotions. And I consider today's topic, the importance of discussing or teaching your children logic and philosophy to be an important hinge kind of between them. Because if your children understand logic, they understand and are conversant in the laws of logic, how logical thinking works, they'll be able to coach themselves in many cases.

They'll be able to look out for themselves. They'll be able to avoid scams. They'll be able to avoid emotional manipulation. They'll be able to simply be good coaches for themselves because they can think. And if we put this together with all the previous skills, then they will have what they need to be logical, rational creatures.

We'll talk more about philosophy in the back half of this show. So logic, is this something that we can and should teach? My answer is simply yes. Ideally, every school would have years of study of logic. Unfortunately, it's a subject that is not given as much attention as I think it really should be.

In some cases, I think this is coming back. Logic is a core part of the classic, the idea of classical education. And there's been a resurgence in classical education over previous years. And so we see more and more discussion of logic and more and more teaching of logic. But regardless of what your child's school does or does not teach, you as a parent have a responsibility to teach your child logical thinking, logical analysis, and the tools of logic.

I want to start with a short apologetic for the teaching of logic. And to do so, I'm gonna read a couple of passages from a book that I referenced previously in this series. The book is entitled, "Teaching the Trivium, "Christian Homeschooling in a Classical Style" by Harvey and Lori Bludorn.

And they have a chapter in this book called, "Teaching Logic" that I think does a pretty good job and is quite a concise discussion of why teach logic. An argument for teaching logic. The second part of the trivium is logic. Every subject has its own logic, the proper order and relationship between all of the parts.

Logic is the way things fit together, or at least the way they ought to fit together. We want to describe the subject, which we call logic, because all of our understanding of every other subject is built upon the framework of this thing we call logic. What is logic? Logic is the simplest and most elementary of all exact sciences.

It is the science of correct reasoning. Every science is occupied with detecting and describing the necessary and unalterable laws which rule a particular field of knowledge. Considered as a science, logic detects and describes the necessary and unalterable laws of correct reasoning. The apparatus which reasons or performs logic is the mind.

Logic is in a limited sense, a science of the mind. To the extent an individual is incapable of logical analysis and conclusion, he is to the same extent mindless. That is, he does not use the powers of his mind. Dropping down a bit, man's mind is not blank at birth.

Well before we are born, while we are still in our mother's womb, God gives us minds which have the power to evaluate all of our sensory experiences according to a systematic logic, which has already been structured and programmed into our minds by God. This natural logic is thus an inborn faculty for reasoned judgment and inference.

But like any other native faculty, its capacity may be developed through use, its power strengthened through training, and its precision fine-tuned through testing. As infants, when we began to learn the language, we assigned meanings to words according to our logical analysis of how we observed those words being used in sentences.

So let us talk about words and sentences for a moment. Standing all by themselves, words have meaning. For example, here is a word, horse. It has more meaning within a sentence. Here is that word used in sentences. I would love to ride a Palomino horse. I enjoy watching a Clydesdale horse work.

However, when words are illogically combined in a sentence, they become meaningless. For example, consider this sentence. Draw a square circle. The sentence is grammatically correct. Standing by themselves, the two words square and circle make sense. But when these two words are combined as they are in this sentence, they make no sense.

The sentence is nonsense. By definition, something circular cannot also be square. We call this an oxymoron or a contradiction in terms. Sometimes we are confronted by a contradiction in terms, but we do not recognize it. For example, someone might ask, "Can God make a stone too heavy for himself to lift?" The idea is absurd.

We might as well ask God to make a God greater than himself, such that he must bow before that God which he had made. It is not possible in the very nature of things. Yet we are surrounded by attempts to impose such absurdities upon us. Feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism, such ideas are logical absurdities, contradictions in terms, which we are expected to absorb into our thinking.

Feminism, making women to be men would be masculinism. Homosexual, sex means they're different, not the same. Multiculturalism, many cultures may be in contact with each other and affect each other, but they cannot inhabit the same population. Something must give. Such ideas cloud our minds in order to corrupt our thinking and to lead us into a whole world of absurdities.

Our culture is being filled with these absurdities of language. For example, consider the man who thought he could fly. So he jumped off of the top of the Sears Tower. Sure enough, he was flying. As he passed each story on his way down, he cried to those who were looking through the windows, "So far, so good, so far, so good." Everything seemed to be going just fine.

He was even gaining speed as he flew. He had proven that he could fly. But as he approached the pavement below, he suddenly realized that he had overlooked the question of whether he could land. What was the man's problem? He knew the meaning of fly, and he knew the meaning of man, but he made a connection between them, which was contrary to the nature of things.

But that was not nearly so bad as when he tried to put this connection into practice. The law of gravity seemed to play on his side for a while. But once he encountered the pavement below, the law of mass inertia was enforced. He suddenly had a concrete understanding of the matter.

Feminism, homosexuality, multiculturalism, ad nauseum may seem to fly, so far, so good. And some things may seem to play on their side, but eventually they will be arrested by the laws of nature and of nature's God, the creator, to whom they must inevitably give an account. They are absurdities, which contradict the logic of reality.

So words may have meaning, but truth is not in the meaning of words. Truth is in the meaning of sentences. A logician would say it this way. Truth is not in terms, truth is in propositions. A word or a term by itself is neither true nor false. For example, the word broccoli has meaning, but by itself it is neither true nor false.

However, a sentence or a proposition about broccoli, such as broccoli is edible, is either true or false. We each have our own opinion about that proposition, don't we? Truth is not in words or terms, but in sentences or propositions, which say something about those terms. Why is it important to study logic?

Let us consider the most basic law of logic, called the law of contradiction. Some prefer to call it the law of non-contradiction. Aristotle expressed it in this manner. The same attribute cannot at the same time both belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect.

Philosophers always speak in such plain language, don't they? Perhaps we can make it more plain with a simple illustration. A candle may be both lit and not lit, but not at the same time, nor in the same respect. It may be lit in the nighttime, but not lit in the daytime.

Or it may be lit on one end, but not lit on the other end. Or it may be lit on both ends, but not lit in the middle. But wherever it may be lit or not lit, it cannot be both lit and not lit on the same end at the same time, because that would be a what?

A contradiction. A dove cannot have all white feathers and all black feathers at the same time. A person cannot be both completely dead and totally alive at the same time, or at least not in the same respect. Without this law of non-contradiction, words or terms would no longer have specific meaning.

If an attribute may at the same time both belong and not belong to the same word and in the same respect, then that word may be twisted to mean anything. We may trust politicians to supply us with ample examples of this phenomena. For example, a budget surplus is really a reduction of the rate of deficit spending.

If we disregard this basic rule of logic, that a word cannot have contradictory meanings at the same time, then the distinctions between black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, is and is not will slowly grow fuzzy and may eventually dissolve completely. Where there is no logic, there can be no absolute standards, but only relative personal values.

If truth becomes relative in our thinking, then it follows that morality must also become relative in our thinking. Dropping down a bit. In our culture, we have now arrived at the philosophy of polylogism, many logics. We are told that there is no such thing as absolute truth. All truth is relative.

There is no single logic. There are many different logics and all of them are equally valid. This of course means that no logic is actually valid. Apparent contradictions among the different logics must be resolved, so they say, by some force other than reason, because reason itself is the cause of the contradictions.

We shall all be like gods, deciding for ourselves individually or collectively what is good and what is evil. Later. This polylogism is the kind of absurd nonsense which is being taught in government schools today. Though this was once largely confined to the university, now elementary schools are being filled with this nonsense.

Polylogism forms the foundation of modern thinking. With polylogism, absolute truth is absolutely ruled out. The only way to establish any truth is to decree it. Truth is whatever we decide it to be. What we want to be true is our standard for what is true. If it fits with our preferences, then we say, let it be so, and it is so.

Dropping down, we have a section, what is logic useful for? Logic is useful to understand the sciences. Every science, whether it be chemistry, physics, geography, history, or theology, is, or at least it should be, the application of the science of logic to observations made in that particular field of knowledge.

Hence, the study of the exact science of logic is foundational to the study of every other subject. The ancients called logic the organon, the instrument presupposed by every other science. The formal study of logic should therefore be considered a foundational and indispensable part of every educational curriculum, and in the past, it was.

Logic is useful to discern the truth. In the past, logic was the first course required of all college freshmen. Why? Because logic is the means for getting at the truth of propositions, the soundness of arguments, and the possibility or plausibility of assertions. Later, logic is useful in the proper development of the brain.

Our brain can be compared to a muscle in this respect. No pain, no gain. A certain radio commentator likes to describe school-age children's brains as skulls full of mush. We presume he is pointing to their lack of intellectual development due to their improper diet, input of knowledge, lack of exercise, processing of understanding, and extracurricular activity, output of wisdom.

Of course, the mind must have something good to chew on, and it must have a reason to be chewing. But right now, we're only talking about the chewing itself, the logic. Whenever we interrupt the natural trivium progression of learning, leaving out one of the steps, we create a learning dysfunction.

This is the age of learning dysfunctions. This is the age of interruptions. For example, when we omit teaching the basic principles of phonics, then we interrupt the natural development of written phonetic language learning, and we thereby create the learning dysfunction, which we call dyslexia, the inability to read. Well, if we omit teaching the basic principles of logic, then we will create the dysfunction, which we might call dyslogia, the inability to think.

Put dyslexia and dyslogia together, and what do you have? Disaster. Logic is thoroughly dispensed with in modern curricula, except as a tool for manipulation. Nebulous social skills are considered more important than precise thinking skills. Feeling is valued more than discernment. And where some kind of thinking is taught, it is a programmed thinking, not a genuine critical thinking.

The child is trained to think with the herd, like an animal, then socialized to run with the animals in the herd. Beware of stampedes, known today as group consensus. Thou shalt not follow a mindless multitude to do evil. Exodus 23.2. The child is programmed not to question certain concepts, precisely because they are not provable.

They have been handed down from the politically correct gods by infallible revelation, and none may dare to deeply explore their reasoning. It is through some form of logical study that we become skilled to discern between truth and error, and therefore between good and evil, and right and wrong. Now the authors go on to give a discussion of what is logic, defining and describing it, discussing the various forms of logic, how to study logic, et cetera.

But if you're interested in that, you can search out those resources. Obviously, the authors are providing quite a biting social commentary. That book was written, I think, 20 years ago. And what's interesting is if we trace back the last 20 years, I think the authors are proven more right than less right.

Copyright 2001, so 22 years ago. And I used to read those books when I was younger, and I'd say, "Ah, you're going too far. "You're just a whadduckle old religious fundamentalist, "and what's wrong with you?" But tell you what, a lot of those old religious fundamentalists have been proven to be much more right than wrong in many of the arguments that they made.

And to me, what is most important is that last little commentary, that we need to teach our children to think critically, actually to think critically, and not to be trained to think with the herd. And this is exceedingly important in order that our children can obtain for themselves unusual benefits in life.

One of the, years ago, I made a study of John Taylor Gatto's works. He of the well-known "Underground History of American Education," probably his best-known book, was dumbing us down. And my personal summary of his lifetimes of work is quite simply that school was developed for two basic purposes.

To create a homogenous society for easy governance by the powers that be, and for easy selling to by the corporate powers that be. If you have a homogenous population, then it's easy to govern those people. And if you have a homogenous population, it's easy to market and sell to those people to use propaganda.

I personally intend that during my children's schooling curriculum, they'll study the use of propaganda. We'll start with Edward Bernays' book, "Propaganda," kind of the father of modern propaganda, and look at it deeply. Because when you understand logic, and you understand propaganda, and you understand how people have been conditioned through social conditioning to go along with everyone else, it's remarkable.

And all of us are affected by it. All of us are. I have, at various times in my adult life, been scandalized at how much I personally am affected by going along with the herd in many various ways. And I pride myself on doing my best to be a critical thinker, trying to be willing to follow my understanding of the world, regardless of anyone goes with me or not.

And yet constantly, I've been conditioned to fit in with the herd. And this is to our detriment. Left unchecked, this leads to horrific error in populations. And we can look throughout history, and we can find example after example after example, showing that to be true. So how do we combat that?

Well, we study logic, and we study philosophy, and all of their basic practices. We exercise our skills of reason, discernment, and critical thinking. And we do that through the study of logic and philosophy. That's my answer. And we teach through the use of logic and philosophy. We teach people to disassociate from an idea, and examine the idea on its own merits.

And that is a skill that is greatly lacking among our friends. We desperately need more of that in our society. By teaching your children logic and philosophy, by teaching them about propaganda, about emotional manipulation, they will have a defense mechanism that they can use when somebody tries to market a product to them that is not a good fit for them.

When somebody tries to market a lifestyle to them that is not of their choosing, they'll have a tool set that they can use to examine their own decisions, and the outcomes of all of their own decisions. And that's why it's desperately important that we teach our children logic. How do we do that?

Well, we begin with a class, a textbook, some books to start with. I think there are a couple of books. I am not yet at the point where I'm formally teaching logic, but the books are some books that I intend to use when I get to that point. A couple of popular level books that I think are worth considering.

There's a book called "The Fallacy Detective" by Nathaniel Bluedorn and Hans Bluedorn. These are the sons of the authors of this book, "Teaching the Trivium" that I've just read to you from. I think that's a good start. I've become a big fan of "The Life of Fred" books by Stanley Schmidt.

I have ordered his book on logic, and I expect to like it as much as I've liked all of his other math books. But I haven't gotten it in yet, so I look forward to using that one. I think those are good. Those two books are probably good entry-level books to begin with.

And then I intend to supplement that with a scholarly-level textbook to make sure we have a good grounding in the academic approach as well. But I think those two books are good resources for people to begin with. Now let's turn our attention to a related field, and that is the field of philosophy.

And the text that I've chosen to introduce a few of these comments comes from the excellent book, "How to Read a Book." The title is "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. Mortimer Adler, longtime scholar, publisher of the great books series for the Encyclopedia Britannica, et cetera. Amazing scholar, very, very useful guy.

And his book that he's most well-known for, of course, is this book called "How to Read a Book." And when I read this years ago, his chapter on philosophy struck me on a very deep level. And because it made philosophy make sense and it ignited in me a desire to study philosophy.

And so I want to share a few pages with you. "How to Read Philosophy." "Children ask magnificent questions. 'Why are people?' 'What makes the cat tick?' 'What's the world's first name?' 'Did God have a reason for creating the earth?' Out of the mouths of babes comes, if not wisdom, at least the search for it." Philosophy, according to Aristotle, begins in wonder.

It certainly begins in childhood, even if for most of us, it stops there too. The child is a natural questioner. It is not the number of questions he asks, but their character that distinguishes him from the adult. Adults do not lose the curiosity that seems to be a native human trait, but their curiosity deteriorates in quality.

They want to know whether something is so, not why. But children's questions are not limited to the sort that can be answered by an encyclopedia. What happens between the nursery and college to turn the flow of questions off? Or rather, to turn it into the duller channels of adult curiosity about matters of fact?

A mind not agitated by good questions cannot appreciate the significance of even the best answers. It is easy enough to learn the answers, but to develop actively inquisitive minds, alive with real questions, profound questions, that is another story. Why should we have to try to develop such minds when children are born with them?

Somewhere along the line, adults must fail somehow to sustain the infant's curiosity at its original depth. School itself perhaps dulls the mind by the dead weight of rote learning, much of which may be necessary. The failure is probably even more the parent's fault. We so often tell a child there is no answer, even when one is available, or demand that he ask no more questions.

We thinly conceal our irritation when baffled by the apparently unanswerable query. All this discourages the child. He may get the impression that it is impolite to be too inquisitive. Human inquisitiveness is never killed, but it is soon debased to the sort of questions asked by most college students, who, like the adults they are soon to become, ask only for information.

We have no solution for this problem. We are certainly not so brash as to think we can tell you how to answer the profound and wondrous questions that children put. But we do want you to recognize that one of the most remarkable things about the great philosophical books is that they ask the same sort of profound questions that children ask.

The ability to retain the child's view of the world with, at the same time, a mature understanding of what it means to retain it is extremely rare. And a person who has these qualities is likely to be able to contribute something really important to our thinking. We are not required to think as children in order to understand existence.

Children certainly do not and cannot understand it, if indeed anyone can. But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask. The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions, simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before.

If we are to follow them, we too must be childishly simple in our questions and maturely wise in our replies. Now for a limited time at Delamo Motorsports. Get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on Select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3. Considering the Mavericks taking home trophies everywhere, from King of the Hammers to Uncle Ned's Backcountry Rally, you're not going to find a better deal on front row seats to a championship winner.

Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Delamo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon, see dealer for details. The questions philosophers ask. What are these childishly simple questions that philosophers ask? When we write them down, they do not seem simple because to answer them is so difficult.

Nevertheless, they are initially simple in the sense of being basic or fundamental. Take the following questions about being or existence, for example. What is the difference between existing and not existing? What is common to all the things that do exist? And what are the properties of everything that does exist?

Are there different ways in which things can exist? Different modes of being or existence? Do some things exist only in the mind or for the mind, whereas others exist outside the mind and whether or not they are known to us or even knowable by us? Does everything that exists, exist physically?

Or are there some things that exist apart from material embodiment? Do all things change? Or is there anything that is immutable? Does anything exist necessarily? Or must we say that everything that does exist might not have existed? Is the realm of possible existence larger than the realm of what actually does exist?

These are typically the kind of questions that a philosopher asks when he is concerned to explore the nature of being itself and the realms of being. As questions, they are not difficult to state or understand, but they are enormously difficult to answer. So difficult in fact, that there are philosophers, especially in recent times, who have held that they cannot be answered in any satisfactory manner.

Another set of philosophical questions concerns change or becoming rather than being. Of the things in our experience to which we would unhesitatingly attribute existence, we would also say that all of them are subject to change. They come into being and pass away. While in being, most of them move from one place to another, and many of them change in quantity or in quality.

They become larger or smaller, heavier or lighter, or like the ripening apple and the aging beefsteak, they change in color. What is involved in any change? In every process of change, is there something that endures unchanged as well as some respect or aspect of that enduring thing which undergoes change?

When you learn something that you did not know before, you have certainly changed with respect to the knowledge you have acquired, but you are also the same individual that you were before. If that were not the case, you could not be said to have changed through learning. Is this true of all change?

For example, is it true of such remarkable changes as birth and death, of coming to be and passing away, or only of less fundamental changes, such as local motion, growth, or alteration in quality? How many different kinds of change are there? Do the same fundamental elements or conditions enter into all processes of change, and are the same causes operative in all?

What do we mean by a cause of change? Are there different types of causes responsible for a change? Are the causes of change, of becoming, the same as the causes of being or existence? Such questions are asked by the philosopher who turns his attention from being to becoming, and also tries to relate becoming to being.

Once again, they are not difficult questions to state or understand, though they are extremely difficult to answer clearly and well. In any case, you can see how they begin with a childishly simple attitude toward the world and our experience of it. Unfortunately, we do not have space to go into the whole range of questions more deeply.

We can only list some other questions that philosophers ask and try to answer. There are questions not only about being and becoming, but also about necessity and contingency, about the material and the immaterial, about the physical and the non-physical, about freedom and indeterminacy, about the powers of the human mind, about the nature and extent of human knowledge, about the freedom of the will.

All these questions are speculative or theoretical in the sense of those terms that we have employed in distinguishing between the theoretical and practical realms. But philosophy, as you know, is not restricted to theoretical questions only. Take good and evil, for instance. Children are much concerned with the difference between good and bad.

Their behinds are likely to suffer if they make mistakes about it. But we do not stop wondering about the difference when we grow up. Is there a universally valid distinction between good and evil? Are there certain things that are always good, others that are always bad, whatever the circumstances?

Or was Hamlet right when, echoing Montaigne, he said, "There is nothing either good or bad, "but thinking makes it so." Good and evil, of course, are not the same as right and wrong. The two pairs of terms seem to refer to different classes of things. In particular, even if we feel that whatever is right is good, we probably do not feel that whatever is wrong is evil.

But how do we make this distinction precise? Good is an important philosophical word, but it is an important word in our everyday vocabulary too. Trying to say what it means is a heady exercise. It will involve you very deeply in philosophy before you know it. There are many things that are good, or as we would prefer to say, there are many goods.

Is it possible to order the goods? Are some more important than others? Do some depend on others? Are there circumstances in which goods conflict so that you have to choose one good at the expense of foregoing another? Again, we do not have space to go more extensively into these questions.

We can only list some other questions in the practical realm. There are questions not only about good and evil, right and wrong, and the order of goods, but also about duties and obligations, about virtues and vices, about happiness, life's purpose or goal, about justice and rights in the sphere of human relations and social interaction, about the state and its relation to the individual, about the good society, the just polity, and the just economy, about war and peace.

The two groups of questions that we have discussed determine or identify two main divisions of philosophy. The questions in the first group, the questions about being and becoming, have to do with what is or happens in the world. Such questions belong to the division of philosophy that is called theoretical or speculative.

The questions in the second group, the questions concerning good and evil, or right and wrong, have to do with what ought to be done or sought, and they belong to the division of philosophy that is sometimes called practical, and is more accurately called normative. Books that tell you how to make something, such as a cookbook, or how to do something, such as a driver's manual, need not try to argue that you ought to become a good cook or learn to drive a car well.

They can assume that you want to make or do something and merely tell you how to succeed in your efforts. In contrast, books of normative philosophy concern themselves primarily with the goals all men ought to seek, goals such as leading a good life or instituting a good society. And unlike cookbooks and driving manuals, they go no further than prescribing in the most universal terms, the means that ought to be employed in order to achieve these goals.

The questions that philosophers ask also serve to distinguish subordinate branches of the two main divisions of philosophy. A work of speculative or theoretical philosophy is metaphysical if it is mainly concerned with questions about being or existence. It is a work in the philosophy of nature if it is concerned with becoming, with the nature and kinds of changes, their conditions and causes.

If its primary concern is with knowledge, with questions about what is involved in our knowing anything, with the causes, extent, and limits of human knowledge, and with its certainties and uncertainties, then it is a work in epistemology, which is just another name for theory of knowledge. Turning from theoretical to normative philosophy, the main distinction is between questions about the good life and what is right or wrong in the conduct of the individual, all of which fall within the sphere of ethics and questions about the good society and the conduct of the individual in relation to the community, the sphere of politics or political philosophy.

Modern philosophy and the great tradition. For the sake of brevity in what follows, let us call questions about what is and happens in the world or about what men ought to do or seek first order questions. We should recognize then that there are also second order questions that can be asked, questions about our first order knowledge, questions about the content of our thinking when we try to answer first order questions, questions about the ways in which we express such thoughts in language.

This distinction between first order and second order questions is useful because it helps to explain what has happened to philosophy in recent years. The majority of professional philosophers at the present day, and by the way, this was 1950s, I think, the majority of professional philosophers at the present day no longer believe that first order questions can be answered by philosophers.

Most professional philosophers today devote their attention exclusively to second order questions, very often to questions having to do with the language in which thought is expressed. That is all to the good for it is never harmful to be critical. The trouble is the wholesale giving up of first order philosophical questions, which are the ones that are most likely to interest lay readers.

In fact, philosophy today, like contemporary science or mathematics is no longer being written for lay readers. Second order questions are almost by definition, ones of narrow appeal. And professional philosophers like scientists are not interested in the views of anyone, but other experts. This makes modern philosophy very hard to read for non philosophers.

As difficult indeed as science for non scientists. We cannot in this book give you any advice about how to read modern philosophy as long as it is concerned exclusively with second order questions. However, there are philosophical books that you can read and that we believe you should read. These books ask the kinds of questions that we have called first order ones.

It is not accidental that they were also written primarily for a lay audience rather than exclusively for other philosophers. Up to about 1930, or perhaps even a little later, philosophical books were written for the general reader. Philosophers hoped to be read by their peers, but they also wanted to be read by ordinary, intelligent men and women.

Since the questions that they asked and tried to answer were of concern to everyone, they thought that everyone should know what they thought. All of the great classical works in philosophy from Plato onward were written from this point of view. These books are accessible to the lay reader. You can succeed in reading them if you wish to.

Everything that we have to say in this chapter is intended to help you do that. ♪ Let's live in the moment ♪ ♪ Come back Sunday morning ♪ - California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaba Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas.

♪ Let's go, let's go ♪ - Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaba.com/palms to discover more. - One more section. On philosophical method. It is important to understand what philosophical method consists in, at least insofar as philosophy is conceived as asking and trying to answer first order questions. Suppose that you are a philosopher who is troubled by one of the childishly simple questions we have mentioned.

The question, for instance, about the properties of everything that exists or the question about the nature and causes of change. How do you proceed? If your question were scientific, you would know that to answer it, you would have to perform some kind of special research, either by way of developing an experiment to test your answer or by way of observing a wide range of phenomena.

If your question were historical, you would know that you would also have to perform research, although of a different kind. But there is no experiment that will tell you what all existing things have in common, precisely in respect to having existence. There are no special kinds of phenomena that you can observe, no documents that you can seek out and read in order to find out what change is or why things change.

All you can do is reflect upon the question. There is, in short, nothing to do but think. You are not thinking in a total vacuum, of course. Philosophy, when it is good, is not pure speculation. Thinking divorced from experience. Ideas cannot be put together just any way. There are stringent tests of the validity of answers to philosophical questions, but such tests are based on common experience alone, on the experience that you already have because you are a human being, not a philosopher.

You are as well acquainted through common experience with this phenomena of change as anybody else. Everything in the world about you manifests mutability. As far as the mere experience of change goes, you are in as good a position to think about its nature and causes as the greatest philosophers.

What distinguishes them is that they thought about it extremely well. They formulated the most penetrating questions that could be asked about it, and they undertook to develop carefully and clearly worked out answers. By what means? Not by investigation, not by having or trying to get more experience than the rest of us have.

Rather, by thinking more profoundly about the experience than the rest of us have. Understanding this is not enough. We must also realize that not all of the questions that philosophers have asked and tried to answer are truly philosophical. They themselves were not always aware of this, and their ignorance or mistake in this crucial respect can cause unperceptive readers considerable difficulty.

To avoid such difficulties, it is necessary to be able to distinguish the truly philosophical questions from the other questions that a philosopher may deal with, but that he should have waived and left for later scientific investigation to answer. The philosopher was misled by failing to see that such questions can be answered by scientific investigation, though he probably could not have known this at the time of his writing.

An example of this is the question that ancient philosophers asked about the difference between the matter of terrestrial and celestial bodies. To their observation, unaided by telescopes, it appeared to be the case that the heavenly bodies changed only in place. They did not appear to come into being or to pass away like plants and animals, nor did they appear to change in size or quality.

Because celestial bodies were subject to one kind of change only, local motion, whereas all terrestrial bodies change in other respects as well, the ancients concluded that they had to be composed of a different kind of matter. They did not surmise, nor could they probably have surmised, that with the invention of the telescope, the heavenly bodies would give us knowledge of their mutability beyond anything we can know through common experience.

Hence, they took as a question that they thought it proper for philosophers to answer, one that should have been reserved for later scientific investigation. Such investigation began with Galileo's use of the telescope and his discovery of the moons of Jupiter. This led to the revolutionary assertion by Kepler that the matter of the heavenly bodies is exactly the same as the matter of bodies on Earth.

And this in turn laid the groundwork for Newton's formulation of a celestial mechanics in which the same laws of motion apply without qualification to all bodies, wherever they are in the physical universe. On the whole, apart from the confusions that may result, the misinformation or lack of information about scientific matters that mars the work of the classical philosophers is irrelevant.

The reason is that it is philosophical questions, not scientific or historical ones, that we are interested in when we read a philosophical work. And at the risk of repeating ourselves, we must emphasize that there is no other way than thinking to answer such questions. If we could build a telescope or microscope to examine the properties of existence, we should do so of course, but no such instruments are possible.

We do not want to give the impression that it is only philosophers who make mistakes of the sort we are discussing here. Suppose a scientist becomes troubled by the question about the kind of life a man ought to lead. This is a question in normative philosophy. And the only way to answer it is by thinking about it.

But the scientist may not realize that and instead suppose that some kind of experiment or research will give him an answer. He may decide to ask 1000 persons what kind of life they would like to lead and base his answer to the question on their answers. But it should be obvious that his answer in that case would be as irrelevant as Aristotle's speculations about the matter of the celestial bodies.

Now the chapter goes on and of course you should, if you haven't read the book, you should read it. But what has stuck with me for years is that quote about how to reflect upon how to come to philosophical knowledge. Listen very carefully, I want to reread this. "There is no experiment that will tell you what all existing things have in common, precisely in respect to having existence.

There are no special kinds of phenomena that you can observe, no documents that you can seek out and read in order to find out what change is or why things change. All you can do is reflect upon the question. There is in short nothing to do but think." Later, "As far as the mere experience of change goes, you are in as good a position to think about its nature and causes as the greatest philosophers.

What distinguishes them is that they thought about it extremely well. They formulated the most penetrating questions that could be asked about it and they undertook to develop carefully and clearly worked out answers." By what means? Not by investigation, not by having or trying to get more experience than the rest of us have, rather by thinking more profoundly about the experience than the rest of us have.

This to me is what I think is at the core of philosophy, is thinking. And if you are going to engage your brain or your children's brains, the brain's function is thinking. That's what it is for. We are thinking creatures. That is what differentiates us from other creatures. And so, if logic is the base of all good scientific inquiry, philosophy is the base of good thinking.

Earlier in the series, we talked about writing as a way to enhance thinking. Philosophy is the purest form of thinking, simply considering a question, formulating it and thinking about it. And it's been my experience that the practice of that lends to an interest and a wonder of the world that few other things do.

It also lends to a clarity of thought and just a sense of satisfaction when you catch a glimmer of the truth that is out there for us to conceive of with our minds. And so I think that a study of philosophy, at the very least in a rudimentary way, is necessary for all youth.

Now, at what age is this an appropriate pursuit? This would seem to me one of those things that's appropriate for adolescents. And when we think about philosophy, that's the classic, it's part of the classic maturation process. But friend, your child is probably not being taught any kind of reasonable approach to philosophy.

And so unless you can enroll him in a school where there is a solid philosophy curriculum, that's something you're going to have to do yourself. The process of making up your mind as a young man or young woman about the great questions of life is natural and inevitable. Children go through this.

What alarms me, however, in our modern age is that many young men and women are making up their mind without any appreciation or even knowledge of the tremendous progress that we as a human species have made on some of the big questions of life. And so instead of standing on the shoulders of giants that have come before and have dedicated immense amounts of time and effort to thinking through and reasoning through these questions, and instead of positioning themselves to build upon that in their own lives as young men and women, I fear that our young men and women approach the subject as infants without any instruction, any exposure, and they somehow think that they've come up with the greatest thoughts in the world because their only estimation is their own thinking ability.

And I think that is a major flaw. Let me close with a section later in, let me close my discussion of philosophy here with a section later in the same chapter on making up your own mind. A good theoretical work in philosophy is as free from oratory and propaganda as a good scientific treatise.

You do not have to be concerned about the personality of the author or investigate his social and economic background. There is utility, however, in reading the works of other great philosophers who have dealt with the same problems as your author. The philosophers have carried on a long conversation with each other in the history of thought.

You had better listen in on it before you make up your mind about what any of them says. The fact that philosophers disagree should not trouble you for two reasons. First, the fact of disagreement, if it is persistent, may point to a great unsolved and perhaps insoluble problem. It is good to know where the true mysteries are.

Second, the disagreements of others are relatively unimportant. Your responsibility is only to make up your own mind. In the presence of the long conversation that the philosophers have carried on through their books, you must judge what is true and what is false. When you have read a philosophical book well, and that means reading other philosophers on the same subject too, you are in a position to judge.

It is indeed the most distinctive mark of philosophical questions that everyone must answer them for himself. Taking the opinion of others is not solving them, but evading them. And your answers must be solidly grounded with arguments to back them up. This means above all that you cannot depend on the testimony of experts, as you may have to do in the case of science.

The reason is that the questions philosophers ask are simply more important than the questions asked by anyone else, except children. I myself do not yet know to what extent the study of philosophy should be carried out. Certainly, there's a difference between, or there's a major range between zero knowledge of philosophy and philosophical categories versus PhD level philosophy studies.

I don't know where that right range is. At the very least, our children should have some exposure to the great questions of life, some of the answers of life, and should have exposure to the great range of thinking, so that they can be well-equipped to advance that. And then of course, out of philosophy comes many of the practical sciences, social science, politics, et cetera.

But at its foundation, we should make sure that our children are versed at least in the basics of philosophical thought, and are at least aware of the great thinking that is out there, so that if they are interested at a later date in going out and pursuing specialized study in one area or another, that they are equipped to do that.

In conclusion on today's show, I want you to teach your children logic and philosophy and how to use these tools. For logic, I think the practical way to do this is to require your children to articulate the logic of their own ideas and those of others. The study of formalized logic, fallacies, et cetera, has a goal of helping to train good thinking, but then that good thinking needs to be applied to specific subjects, to specific topics, to specific decisions.

And so one way you can do this is by engaging in your children about the topics of the day, and most importantly, the topics of their life, and requiring them to defend to you the reasons for their decisions. Young people who are consistently required to engage in logical analysis of their own thinking, of their own actions, will be better equipped to make better decisions, and those better decisions will drive their life outcome.

The decisions that we make in life drive the outcomes that we experience. Obviously, there's action in between, but decision precedes action. Excuse me, decision precedes action. So at its starting point, decisions are the most important foundations to build, and so you can drill your children consistently by simply asking them what they're thinking about and why they're thinking about doing them, doing those things, and require them to defend the logic of their own ideas to you.

This is something that I think my own father did extraordinarily well in my life and in the lives of my siblings. When I was an adolescent, I enjoyed a much higher degree of freedom than many other people, because my dad's philosophy was to be a very strong, controlling parent in the early years, and then to back off massively and move into the role of a coach and mentor during the period of adolescence.

And so of course, there were still times when he had to step in and exercise control, but he exercised much less control than many other people. But what he always did very effectively in my life was require me to articulate what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, why a certain decision was a good decision, what would happen if a good decision weren't the case, or what it would happen if I made a bad decision, what I would do if I wound up making a mistake, et cetera.

And this constant questioning built within me a habit that prevails to this day of questioning my own thinking. And this has helped me constantly to be able to defend my ideas with greater clarity to myself, primarily, but also to others, and also to be able to coach myself with more effectiveness, because I can observe where I'm behaving emotionally, I can observe where I'm behaving rationally, and I can consider the logical outcome of my actions.

And so the practical tool is teach your children tools of logic, but also require them just consistently to articulate the logic of their own ideas and their own plans, their own desires. Also then require them to articulate the logic of others. We are living in a society that seems bereft in some many parts of foundational logic.

People are living their lives based upon the fickleness of emotion only. And when they make logical defense, it's important to listen and understand, but it's important to think about the logical train of being because in the same way that that example of the guy flying off the top of a skyscraper, sometimes the logical idea, the logical outcome of an idea is very clear long before the results are seen.

It's interesting, you go back and you read history, and you read historians that with hindsight, they look back and they say, "Well, World War I was inevitable because of these things." And then because of the way that World War I concluded, World War II was inevitable. Or you think about geopolitics, a geopolitical strategist says, "The success of this country or the orientation of this country in this direction is inevitable." And it's because of the logical outcome of certain facts, certain things, and wise analysts can indeed see those things in advance.

The timing is often hard to get right. No one would have said that World War I had to occur in 1914 or 1940 for World War II, or whatever the specific thing is. The timing is hard to predict, but the logical outcome is inevitable. And it's important to identify the logical outcome of ideas.

And especially as you move into adulthood, this is one of the biggest things that for me, I've gained confidence in. When I was younger, I thought, "Well, if so-and-so continues to live that way, they're gonna wind up having this certain result." But I didn't have enough living under my belt to be confident in my analysis.

Today, with a bit more living, I have increasing levels of confidence. If a guy overeats by 500 calories a week, he's going to wind up obese. That obesity is going to wind up with medical complications. He's going to wind up with all kinds of issues because of the fact that he is observably overeating by 500 calories a week.

Unless there is change, the outcomes are inevitable. You can't predict it with precision, but you can predict it with good, with appropriate levels of accuracy. You see this in relationships. You watch a relationship between a husband and a wife, and you identify certain major red flags. And regardless of the good face that the husband and wife put on today, their marriage is doomed unless they change.

Similarly, you see positive signs, and things are good, right? Relationship between a father and a child, et cetera. You can see a good relationship, you know that things will eventually work out. And so life is very logical. We live in an orderly cause and effect universe. We live in an orderly sowing and reaping universe.

And where there are causes, there are effects. Where there is sowing, there is reaping. And so by discussing the logic of ideas, we can help our children to make wise decisions for them, for their families, and to be defended against those who would manipulate them. And then on the topic of philosophy, I think the importance of philosophy is to build empathy and to be able to disassociate ideas from people.

A major issue that I observe in our modern era is that many people have a very hard time disassociating their ideas from one another. Perhaps a political example would be a better example. Today, many people have associate and draw their political ideology from a certain leaning or interest, from a sense of association, a political bent, a political party, et cetera, rather than considering ideas in a logically, philosophically detached way.

And I myself find this very frustrating. Maybe people are happier if they just say, I'm a partisan follower of this particular party and life is good. But this doesn't lead to effective, productive outcomes. And as an observer of politics and such, it drives me crazy. Why don't people, why can't we make progress?

Why can't we create political function instead of dysfunction by separating ideas and analyzing them on their merits? And I think that if we did more of that, we could bring people together. We could create more peace and harmony in relationships. But the starting point is to teach people to consider ideas, not people.

And not to say, well, I'm gonna reject that person's ideas 'cause I don't like that person. And so philosophy builds empathy and it helps people to be better thinkers. I hope that you'll take these tools. I hope that you'll teach them to your children. And I hope that you will help your children to exercise their brains so that they can become smarter, both in a physical sense, as well as in a practical sense, and that they will learn through the rigorous application of good logic and good philosophy to apply their ideas and to share their ideas in a way that as humans, we can advance and move on towards a better and better future.

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