Philosophy for Children

You can't give a person self-esteem, but you can validate it. You can tell him that he does deserve happiness, that pride is good, that he has nothing to prove to others. You can remove the doubts and barriers that a child can pick up by default or through bad influences.

The kindest thing you can do for a person is to encourage him to enjoy his own deserved happiness.

Post 21

Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 10:10pm

Well put, Ted. And for those we care about, we let them see our benevolent expectations - which help them enormously in reaching their potentials.

Post 22

Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 9:50pm

Jordan-
Those are some interesting puzzles. I think some would make great teaching opportunities. How do you think Objectivism would answer them?

Ship of Theseus -

I think a more appropriate puzzle would be: "If your body's cells are being replaced constantly, are you still the same person?" From an Objectivist point of view, there are no paradoxes - there is only reality. "You" are not just the cells which make "you" up, you are also your consciousness. Though your cells die and are replaced, you are still the same consciousness, so you are still the same person.

Zeno's Paradoxes sound a little bit too much like advanced math. I'm not sure I could come up with a simple enough version, nor draw its link to ontology, that they could understand. Perhaps: If you're 10 feet from a wall, and every step you took brought you half the remaining distance to the wall, how many steps would it take to reach the wall. Mathematically, you would never reach the wall because every step would leave you some distance from the wall which the next step would only bring you halfway closer to. Objectivism, I think, would argue, "Of course you'll reach the wall. Just reach out and touch it when you're close enough. You and the wall can never occupy the same space, because you can't walk through walls." But I'm not sure how I would tie this into knowing what is really real.

Evil demons hypo-

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this. Do you mean evil demons hypothetically? Asking whether there really are evil demons, or how we would know there are evil demons or not?

The Trolley Problem-

I imagine Objectivism would begin by dismissing the relevance of the problem and put it under "emergencies." It's not a moral question one would encounter, therefore it has no bearing upon how their moral principles would deal with it, nor should it be considered when developing your morality. If pressed, the Objectivist would probably ask whether any of those in the current path, or possible path, are of value to you. If one (or many) of the group were of value to you, you would flip the switch. If the one in the possible path were of value to you, you would not flip the switch. If none are of value to you, or all are of value to you, your moral principles won't help you. You're screwed anyway and no amount of fretting, worrying, or wishing is going to help.

Post 23

Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 9:52pm

Mr. Wolfer-
Don't you think preparing them, showing them, how to use their consciousness properly would be accomplished through teaching them philosophy?

Post 24

Friday, July 25, 2008 - 2:44am

Don't you think preparing them, showing them, how to use their consciousness properly would be accomplished through teaching them philosophy?

Jeff,
I know this question was asked of Steve, but to give my own answer, I don't think philosophy would be effective at kids' your age.

I'd say that learning Formal and Informal Logic would be much more effective. I think your kids would learn much more about the use of their consciousness (and have way more fun) learning how to identify fallacies, than trying to understand philosophical abstractions, and how they apply.

Logic is the real deal, it isn't just theory.

Great overlook here.

An excellent college text book I could suggest would be David Kelley's "The Art of Reasoning." It's a college text, but there are loads of lessons you could simplify for your own children. I highly recommend it.

Post 25

Friday, July 25, 2008 - 4:51am

Jeff,

You asked me,

"Don't you think preparing them, showing them, how to use their consciousness properly would be accomplished through teaching them philosophy?"

No.

I've liked Teresa's posts all through this thread - the last one as well.

Knowledge is hierachical, so are the skills sets used in acquiring knowledge. Teaching them philosophy later, when they are older, will be wiser. For now, help them to reach out for that first set of skills, critical thinking, start them on the road to building good character traits, model for them what a good man is. Live as if a happy and joyous existence really is the norm.

It is after they have, in effect, been living the philosophy (although without the formal knowledge) AND they have the reasoning skills AND the intellectual maturity that you open the door to understanding the why and the how of a world that they already know on a common sense level - and they will zoom into it, hungry for those deeper understandings. It will validate what they already know on a sense of life level. So much of what they learn then will validate all the little things you said or modeled over the years. High self-esteem makes them open to a philosophy advocating reason and individuality (good things to have going into the dangerous teen years).

As a side note, it is the right time not only developmentally, but it also is the right time to innoculate against what they will be hit with in college.

It is a tricky business. If you teach now, too much is like training a parrot - the meaning isn't all there for them and they are absorbing it because you are the authority - that is the nature of childhood - but this isn't a philosophy that should be learned parrot-like or on the say so of authority. If you wait till the teen years, it is a different risk: unless you have maintained a strong bond, you will lose them, to some degree, to this culture's powerful peer pressure and gigantic generational gap. Parenting is tough.

Post 26

Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:19pm

Ms. Isanhart and Mr. Wolfer-
Your logic is hard to refute. I'll have to give it more thought.

Ms. Isanhart-
The link to the fallacies is fantastic. Thank you, very much. I'll check out the book.

Post 27

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 11:20am

You children may be the wrong age for this, but I've always thought Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree would be an excellent way to foster a philosophical discussion with a child. There are a number of ways you could take the discussion.

If you haven't had the pleasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up7-xHm6jlA

"And the Tree was happy. But not really." Horrifying.

Post 28

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 12:17pm

Hi Jeff S,

The puzzles are just a way of getting the kids to think in a more philosophic way. They don't need definitive answers for the puzzles to be useful. They just serve as a tool to "peel back the onion" to get them thinking about philosophy's constant subtext to otherwise rather banal things.

The evil demons thing is Descartes' "how do we know" inquiry. How do we know we're not being operated by evil demons? You can show them an excerpt from the matrix ("take the pill" alice and wonderland reference science) for an illustrative example.

There're lots of books that just highlight simple philosophic conundrums that serve to evoke deeper thinking. Just have "philosophy time". Read 3 paradoxes or so. Have them each think of an answer, and maybe they can have a light-hearted mock debate.

Jordan

Post 29

Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 12:32pm

The Giving Tree? Why not just rent some snuff films, feed them broken glass, or boil the family pet alive? Mr. Fischer, you are Sadist!

Post 30

Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 5:31pm

Granted. But I hope you're so upfront with parents who take their kids to a church with a bloody corpse hung on a cross. Oops, forgot who I was talking to ;)

You've touched on its genius, in a way. The book has such an innocent veneer that I think its darkness is missed even by adults, or perhaps.... only by adults. Not sure how else to explain it being published as a children's book.

Rest easy Ted, I've yet to subject such a torture upon a child. In all seriousness though, at what age might you will a person to suffer that dose of perspective?

Post 31

Sunday, July 27, 2008 - 6:05pm