>>13835846People develop "cognitive decline" or some such, right?
Well how many of these people were ever taught, or ever learned, how to think in the first place? I have the experience of this: there was my life before logic and philosophy (undergraduate, in first 2 years) and my life after, and I was completely transformed in my mental processes, to where I considered myself before to having nonfunctional "cognitive" ability- eg., I couldn't tell who was telling the truth, who was lying, what was real, what was possible, what is or was true, or false, or whatever. Afterward, I could think, I could evaluate, I could unlearn bullshit, etc.
From there my intellectual development was all upward, all constructive. From this experience I began to see the culture and society at large, and how they "teach" kids, to be deeply fucked up.
My theory is simple: the mind is like a house. Its integrity depends on its foundation. If you don't have a foundation of logic and reason, you will just incorporate more and more bullshit into your synaptic processes, your base state will be "anything could be possible", your interpretations of reality become more and more muddled and skewed over time.
There are discrete, biological reasons for cog. declines, but, I think that, because building a rational mind is an active process of remodeling, if it is treated that way, I think cog. decline is preventable, or at least, you can resist its advance.
>how much does mental exercise help and what count as mental exercise really?"mental exercise" is actually physical exercise, and the research is unequivocal on this: there really isn't any other kind of exercise. Aerobic and anaerobic exercise's effects ARE the basis for brain health.
To sum up:
1. physical fitness = brain fitness
2. Disordered thinking = disordered brain function
Bidirectional causality, basically. By not teaching kids logic 1st, we are handicapping them from being able to learn and have good mental hygeine.
