Hi yall, Im baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! =P
So this is something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. A project that has been on my mind for a while, and feels appropriate to start now. I have to admit, I probably have some delusions of grandeur in my approach to this project. I can’t shake the feeling that it is very meaningful and could be important, not just for me, but uh… for society… LOL! See what I mean? The humble side of me is embarrassed at these thoughts. The insecure part of me is worried I’ve got nothing and my ego is just making shit up. But I can’t shake the feeling…
Anyone reading this should be aware of these feelings, to better understand what kind of mind space my ideas emanate from. I fear my language may be colored by the grandiosity, and I don’t want this turning people off. So if you think I’m off my rocker, please call me out on it. If you think my ideas are full of shit or nothing special, and my ego is getting the best of me, let me hear it. One of the primary reasons I share this here is to expose my ideas to the “fires of rigorous debate.” This is a theme I will return to in due time! 
Another reason I am sharing this is because I know this will have to a be a collaborative process. I have nothing near a finished idea here. Its something fuzzy, off in the distance of my mind always escaping easy translation into language. So I ask for the help of anyone who is willing.
Before I go on, I feel it necessary to give context. These ideas obviously, inevitably exist as functions of my life experiences. I think it will be very helpful to understand some of the subjective experiences that I believe influenced me in the hopes that it will make my conveyance of the ideas easier to understand and interpret. Unfortunately it may get a little long-winded telling you stories about myself. I can’t say that these stories will be all that interesting, but I will try my best to make it so. If you do get tired of hearing me talk about myself (something I have discovered I do far too much of) I will try to organize my writing in a way that you can skip ahead to the philosophical meat and be able to refer back to the experiential contexts when necessary. So feel free to scroll down and read the meat first.
Ok ready? Lets get started with story time 
Context 1 (who am I really?): Im Jewish. Moving on.
Context 2 (my passion): I’ve loved to participate in and observe debate since a very early age. See Context 1 
Point is I’ve been fascinated by debate. It has always seemed to me to be such an important form of competition, possibly the most important kind. A chess game of the mind I used to call it. I don’t know if that’s a bulletproof metaphor, nonetheless I think it gets the point across. While trying to measure intelligence is an activity that is often rightfully criticized (considering there are so many forms of intelligence) I’ve always felt deep inside that the “winner” of a good faith, honest debate has proven their intelligence to be superior in some very important, meaningful way. Now that my thoughts on this are a little more mature, I believe more strongly that debate proves the most important form of intelligence. More on that later.
Context 3 (academic philosophy): Knowing I loved debate, I chose to study philosophy in college thinking it would be relevant to my passion. For the most part, I discovered I was wrong. Now, let it be said that I am not the most disciplined specimen. That is a huge understatement. I have always been lazy as fuck. It is my greatest regret and currently my greatest challenge in life as I approach a ripe old age of 30 years. I dearly wish I had developed habits more conducive to a disciplined lifestyle in my young age. So suffice it to say, I was not very studious in college. I can see this being held against me. I can imagine someone arguing that I just never applied myself to learn the fundamentals of philosophy, and had I done so I could have found great gratification in academic philosophy. This may be true, but let’s set this argument aside for now (we may come back to it later) and lets focus on the admittedly flawed path I took for the sake of context. With some notable exceptions, I concluded that academic philosophy involved too much reading of what some dead guys wrote a long time ago, too much history, and not enough of… Practicing Philosophy… whatever that means. It was also at this stage that I discovered something very important. Through my experience of studying philosophy with classmates, I came to be acutely aware of just how “stupid” the great majority of people really were. Let me elaborate on “stupid.” Stupid = uncritical, beliefs adopted without rigorous review /evaluation, biased, emotional thought. I have some hilarious tidbits I could tell you all from my intro to ethics class, but I have a feeling a lot of you will know where I’m coming from. It is at this stage that I started frequenting and spending extensive time on philosophy forums, mainly this one
Context 4 (debate for debate’s sake): Looking back at my post history here is fascinating. Often times I was an idiot, adamantly championing theories I had pulled out of my backside days before. Challenging established ideologies thinking I was some kind of rebel or intellectual mastermind having stumbled upon some truth that most people were too stupid to see. But, I clearly remember, it was always the thrilling competition that drove me first and foremost. I remember not being attached to the conclusions of my theories, I didn’t care about what they implied about reality. I can confidently say that my moral sensibilities and pre-conceived notions of reality did not pull hard on me in any particular direction. Undoubtedly, my theories were colored and influenced by my intellectual biases, but that is not why I cherished them. I was attached to my theories because I perceived them, at the time, to be most reasonable and well conceived. In some sense, I felt as though they were monuments to my intelligence. While this sounds bad and egotistical, this was my primary driver. In better terms, my theories were monuments to the effort and skill required to make and support them. To use a sporting analogy, I was proud of my ideas in a similar fashion to how a basketball player might be proud of their high-scoring performance in a game.
Ignore for a moment the fact that often times my theories were founded on limited and clearly flawed information. I realize now how important what I was doing was to my intellectual and philosophical development. I was, what I call, world building. Based on the poorly researched information that was at my disposal I was imagining models of reality, analyzing them and trying to make sure they comport with my limited information. Then presenting them to the public at ILP and opening them up for discussion and critique, trying my damnedest to defend them. Sometimes from righteous criticism and sometimes from silly sophistry. But always with the express intent of waging an honest debate to, hopefully, leave no doubt that my theory is strong. I was finally Practicing Philosophy. And it was eminently gratifying. This practice goes to the core of this project: Redefining Philosophy
One downside to this practice was that, in my personal life in debates with friends and family, I was often accused of arguing for the sake of argument. People would routinely tell me that I just wanted to win the argument to prove how smart I am. That I wasn’t trying to solve the problem or deal with the issues at hand. I see now that they were right. But they misunderstood my motivations. I didn’t want to win the argument so that people perceived me as smart. It wasn’t for show. I wanted to win because I wanted to PROVE that I was smart, and that I played this chess game of the mind better than you. To prove that my theories will stand, where yours will fall. That my position was strong, where yours was weak. As egotistical as this all sounds, I feel that some form of this appreciation for the effort, skill and talent required to build theories (on any topic) that hold up well to criticism and debate is what is missing from society at large. And that it is missing because of a failure of academic philosophy, and a failure of society to recognize the role philosophy should play in education.
The MEAT
Now that you have a little bit of context, lets get to the ideas. My idea starts with a simple enough theory. I believe that one of the contributing factors to why the general population is relatively stupid is because at no point in our education are we introduced to the idea that, ideally, our belief systems should be thoroughly, meticulously engineered. Some might say we do not promote critical thinking in general, but in western cultures I don’t think that is necessarily true. We might not be great at promoting critical thinking, but I would say it is at least generally regarded as a goal of our educational systems. Critical thinking is regarded as important for solving problems and being successful in many professions. Mathematicians need critical thinking, scientists need critical thinking, engineers need critical thinking. But does anyone growing up in western cultures ever remember anything along the lines of: critical thinking is an important element to determining your political, moral, philosophical ideologies. At least coming from public education? I don’t remember anything like that.
For some reason our every day belief systems are kept somewhat sacred, outside the scope of reason. I can guess why. It is likely the pull and influence of conservative ideologies such as tradition and religion that are desperately trying to stay relevant in an increasingly rational world. Also, I can imagine some arguing that this is by design. That the powers that be don’t want to teach us how to think, they just want to load us up with useful tricks and skills so that we can be productive little citizens. While to some extent this may be true, the ongoing rational awakening of society at large through a realization of the value of critical thinking in an economic, professional sense should inevitably, despite protest and objection from traditional powers, extend to an appreciation for and utilization of critical thinking in all things including everyday personal beliefs and politics. In less verbose terms, I’m just saying that society’s slow but sure progress towards increased rationalism should eventually extend to all things. And this is true, you can see it in society. It just isn’t moving as fast as I would like.
I am left with the impression that our westernized, progressive educational systems, with all of their faults and triumphs, are failing society at progressing rationalism in this regard. And when I say educational systems, I don’t just mean schools. There is also the media and “social engineering apparatus.” Basically, anything that teaches people, through direct education or example and suggestion, how to function in society. And I don’t see anyone mentioning this. I don’t see any groups whose stated purpose is to promote rationalism in general. But there should be. It is my belief that this is one of the biggest reasons for a lot of our political difficulties. An under-appreciation for the rationalist approach to solving society’s social and political problems. I re-iterate the point that it is completely acceptable and normal to defer to professionals in the field of mathematics, science, engineering and the like. So a fundamental question of my project is, where is the professional thinker? Where is the guy whose job it is to study and learn how to develop the best, most reasonable, most effective ideas in general? A thought immediately comes to mind, at least for me. Shouldn’t that be the purview of academic philosophy? Is it already? And if so, is it doing a good job?
Let me try to clarify some definitions. I imagine a lot of people reading this will see me talking about rationalism and will think I am promoting a somewhat specific world view. Such as scientific rationalism. This is not the case. I use the term generally and somewhat ambiguously. One of the goals of this project is to actually better define these ideas, because as I said earlier, they are floating around in my head somewhat fuzzy and I would appreciate help nailing them down. In my head, rationalism represents a general approach towards ideation where, through a more standardized, formal methodology, the process can be qualitatively evaluated. I want to be able to say “this guy’s approach to coming up with his idea was more rational than that other guys.” I wonder if a lot of you fellow philosophers will incredulously proclaim that what I suggest is impossible, and there is no truth, and its all subjective and yada yada yada. And on the one hand, I agree. There are so many problems with human reasoning and traditional conceptions of “truth” and “reality.” But nonetheless, in my many years debating with people, I am firmly convinced there are at least some solid guidelines that can distinguish good reasoning from bad reasoning. Good arguments from bad arguments.
I am sure we are all aware of the basic fallacies and common mistakes in reason. But I want more than that. I feel strongly that there should be stronger guidelines, something akin to scientific guidelines on how to perform statistical analysis. Maybe that’s pushing it, but I know there is more than what I have seen. Possibly, my lack of education is to blame here and fields like formal logic already take care of this. But then my concern would be how those guidelines are packaged and promoted to the public. Ideally, we should be able to effectively promote the idea that there are professionals who have studied a methodology for reasoning in general that allows them to make reasonable conclusions and analyses better than the average layman. There should be a field in academia devoted to this. Shouldn’t that field be philosophy???
Ok gota take another break. Thoughts so far?
