How far have we come?

Karl Marx said 'philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point, however, is to change it'. Plato believed the point of philosophy was education, and in the modern day more people get degrees. But could we as a species be better educated? The problem is, philosophy is not a subject of facts and we love to teach our children facts. Why can't we teach them to debate, to argue, to speculate? I believe the next step of philosophy is to become mainstream, I see glimpses of it in some of the recent works of philosophy professors. They are writing books aimed at making simple some of the problems and solutions that have been unanswered for millennia. If we can move away from the academic writings of some of the most famous philosophers, towards everyone learning how to conjecture and refute, teaching people to develop their own intuition, how to use authority and imagination, that must be the goal.

With the rise of science, laws and facts have been central to education, but Plato said over two thousand years ago, that the dialectic needs to be part of our education. That is what I would like to see in my philosophy, if I can make the dialectic seem as simple as a fact, then maybe people will learn to use it. The argument in philosophy has often been between rationalists and empiricists and to my mind there is no question dialectical reasoning belongs to the rationalist side, but it affects our judgement which is definitely empirical. If I can develop the relationship between these two schools, I will be on my way to a good philosophy.

Can we teach children about the possibility of God? Teach them about speculating on what has designed and powered existence, start with the senses and what we see, then develop the ideas of knowledge. That we know more than just the world we see, we know ourselves and our understanding, we know others and their understanding. If philosophy could just find a relation, it has often be searched for in knowledge itself, but my distinction would be between understanding and judgement. We have to teach children how and why they use their judgement and how and why they can use their understanding. I don't believe I have all the answers but I want to right something that is both insightful and accessible. If young adults are able to understand my speculation then I have achieved my goal. I want to write something that encourages the next generation to take up and improve my theories, that it encourages people to challenge interpretation and to speculate on consciousness and the spiritual. I believe a spiritual revolution is needed and maybe I can play a part in it.