Category: Kids/Padawans

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said we have a part of our mind, REASON, that deals with rules. For example, to fully and properly encounter/experience a triangle, my mind needs to be able to apply a rule to the thing I see or think to experience it as a triangle. So, if I can apply the rule that the shape I am considering is a enclosed figure with 3 straight side whose angles are either equilateral, right, scalene, or isosceles, then I can properly encounter the entity as the triangle it is. Having this definition or rule before my mind’s eye allows me to see this “something” as an equilateral triangle. Similarly, the rule of either beautiful mansion, average house, or tiny shack sketches out the possible ways house-ness can appear or present itself to us. Of course the cottage can be beautiful and quaint too!

Math was very important to Plato and he had a sign at his school that students needed to be good at math to enter. This didn’t mean to study philosophy you had to be good at geometry and multiplication, but rather students needed to understand what made something learnable, mathematics like geometry being a great example of the learnable. We mean “learnable” in speaking of math when we use the word “polymath:” a person of wide-ranging knowledge or learning.

For example, you may have come to Plato to learn what justice is, the definition/rule that allows us to experience behaviors as just/unjust. Coming up with such a definition/rule, we do not invent something new, but try to un-cover what justice is and always was. Similarly, when our sense of justice is offended, such as when we see the traditional definition of marriage trampling on LGBTQ+ rights, we redefine marriage to reflect what Justice is and always was. Plato said thinking is re-collection, so repeated failed attempts at defining justice are attempts to get closer and closer to what Justice is and always was. Similarly, defining “triangle” doesn’t mean being a creative artist and creating a definition out of nothing, but being a miner trying to unearth the essence or rule or definition of “triangleness.”

Can you come up with a rule for what dog-ness is that would make possible encountering something as a dog?

What is Metaphysics? Oxford Languages defines it this way:

• The branch of philosophy that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space. (eg., “They would regard the question of the initial conditions for the universe as belonging to the realm of metaphysics or religion”)

This definition and those like it are both common and incorrect. The initial conditions of the universe would be physics, not metaphysics, which as the word suggests is what makes physics possible: The famous philosopher Immanuel Kant thought about metaphysics in this way, and for instance did a metaphysics of morals, asking what made moral experiences and judgments possible, which means what must the mind’s eye always already have in view that makes moral experiences and judgements possible?

The philosopher Leibniz said the basic question of metaphysics is “Why is there something rather than nothing?” If we look at the words of this question, we see that it is saying “TO BE means to have a Why.” This is the basic starting point of metaphysical questioning. But what does it mean for an entity to have a why?

So, how does it work? The philosopher Martin Heidegger gives this example:

• we could not have the experience of beings that we do unless we had in view such things as variation/equality by the mind’s eye in order to encounter various things; a view of sameness/contrariety to encounter ourselves as self-same in each case; a view of symmetry and harmoniousness allow us to arrange and construct things; etc.

But, more basically, what does it mean to say “TO BE means to have a WHY?” This comes from Plato’s Sophist where Plato criticizes Antisthenes and says the idea of a non-metaphysical philosophy is “the most laughable (kategolastotata)” because we could not even encounter an entity unless we did so with the mind’s eye having Being in front of it: experiencing the entity in the light of Being. What does this mean. Plato gives the example in the Sophist that the dog is not just a “this here,” but is already being made intelligible by an understanding of Einai, Being, choris, separate from, ton allown, the others, and kath auto, in itself.  I encounter the dog as a “not me,” for example, and “a unity,” and “not the house,” etc. 

So, can you do a metaphysics of Friendship, asking what makes the experience of Friendship possible?

(1) Do you pick the American 100 dollar bill, or the Canadian 100 dollar bill?

(2) Can you spot the key difference between the American National Anthem and the Canadian National Anthem?

(A) The Star Spangled Banner Lyrics
by Francis Scott Key (1814)

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

(B) Official lyrics of “O Canada”

O Canada! Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.*


With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North, strong and free!


From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.


God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.


O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

(Activity) Design your own secular hundred dollar bill or write your own secular national anthem

A member of the House of Representatives is taking their oath on a classic Superman comic book:

Next time you need to swear an oath, swear an oath to Superman!

Imagine you went back in time to when people didn’t understand what a rainbow is. Pick one of the religions above and use some of its ideas to explain a rainbow.

Darth Harley says: “Every nature mystery in history that has been solved has been solved by science. If someone tells you god is the answer, ask them how well has that explanation worked in the past?”

Come up with some tough questions about religion that a religious person should be able to answer but may have trouble with …

Did God Create Us Ready Made The Way We Are Now?

Humans and OCTUPUSES shared the same ancestor: Both are descendants of a worm-like creature that lived 518 million years ago -and this could explain the creature’s high intelligence

• Octopuses are known to be highly intelligent and a new study finds this could be due to having brains similar to humans 
• Researchers found octopuses  possess a variety of gene regulators called microRNAs (miRNAs) in their neural tissue comparable to that of humans
• This is likely because humans and octopuses descended from the same  primitive worm-like animal that lived 518 million years ago

See the full article here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11470349/Humans-octopuses-descended-animal-lived-518-million-years-ago.html

Answers In Genesis is a Conservative Christian group who argue that if there is no God with the authority to tell us what is right and wrong, there is no such thing as objective/true morality. They say:

• “Many evolutionists are quite clear that evolution does not provide a basis for morality. If evolution is true, then there can be no universal moral code that all people should adhere to.“

Is this a good argument? For instance, would we say that if there is no God to “stamp” as true what criteria and standards we use to evaluate good figure skating, that we have no ground for calling a figure skating routine objectively good or poor?

Activity: Come up with a list of activities that are evaluated with criteria and standards, without talking about God. How might this relate to evaluating human behaviors as good and bad?