This topic came to mind in a similar way to Cory's blog post regarding Trump as a solid candidate for president (which you should also read). For a long while now I have believed that people should be more aware of how to both recognize and in turn make logical arguments for or against a position. This has become even more obvious of a shortcoming in most people's education during the current presidential election where the typical (albeit maybe slightly worse than usual) shit flinging between different sides has commenced. Note that I am talking strictly about the irrational sides of these debates, as I am aware there is still the occasional logical debate between different candidates or supporters. Obviously I am not trying to say that this is the only thing that K-12 schools need to implement, nor that it is necessarily the most important. There are a number of reasons that personal finance should be taught from a young age as well because we have an epidemic of poor money management. However, topics like personal finance have been discussed frequently in other articles, attention that I feel philosophy and especially logic have not gotten. Whether it is promoting Hillary Clinton because she is a woman, Republican candidates because they are Christian, or Donald Trump as an actual candidate, to denouncing Bernie Sanders because he is Socialist (and that is for communists and is what Nazi Germany was apparently) or any candidate from the other political party simply because they are not in your group, people are trying to pass illogical and irrelevant conditions as important to the voting process. None of the above mentioned shortcomings or benefits are particularly relevant to the presidential race, aside from Bernie being a Democratic Socialist (an actual political stance with policies included) which is included simply for the vast number of times that it has been mis-allocated to fascism and stealing. If the American public had a better grasp on logical arguments perhaps we wouldn't be in a situation where the Republican party has a front runner like Donald Trump intending to implement a number of fascist policies (ACTUALLY like Nazi Germany this time) and whose candidates feel the need to sprout Christian values and anti-democratic sentiments in the primaries just so that they can get the nomination. Democrats are also at fault here with Hillary Clinton pushing ahead in polls despite her criminal negligence with top secret documents and information in her emails and her unusually tight bond with the increasingly disproportionately rich corporations. With a higher base understanding of debates and logic we might actually have intelligent discourse between candidates (as hard to believe as that may be).
Philosophy ties in to this in how closely related it is to logic. The two subjects can easily be taught simultaneously and they play off of each other quite well. It is impossible to have a grasp of philosophy without first having a basis in logical thinking and logic having to do with knowledge is in itself a branch of philosophy. If people as a whole had a better grasp of knowledge and what it means to "know" something I feel that we would have the potential to go a lot further as a society.
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NicI'll write about science, philosophy, shows and video games. The first two frequently in regards to the latter two. Archives
March 2016
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