Philosophy for Children is an important educational programme that engages children in philosophical inquiry as the means to make sense of the world. A key to its success is that participant’s progress with making sense of the world or, more colloquially, they develop better ideas. Although philosophical progress is essential to the value of Philosophy for Children, there is little written on this important concept and what is written tends to be merely suggestive. The result is that teachers and students often find themselves lost in the dialogical, open inquiry of Philosophy for Children where there is no pre-determined end-point or uncontroversial ‘right’ answers they can move towards. This paper will uncover the seed of a conception of philosophical progress in the current Philosophy for Children literature and then ‘grow’ this into a more adequate conception of philosophical progress. I argue that philosophical progress in Philosophy for Children should be conceived of as the movement from philosophical problems to philosophical resolutions, or in other words, from incongruous and inadequate conceptions to transformed conceptions where the problems no longer occur. A framework of philosophical inquiry helps students to keep their bearings as they move from philosophical problems to philosophical resolutions, and helps them to identify milestones that indicate they are getting somewhere. They know they have made progress not because they have the ‘right’ answer, but because they have better conceptions that are in greater reflective equilibrium in comparison with the incongruous and inadequate conceptions they started with and in comparison with alternative resolutions. My recommendation is that such a conception of philosophical progress become a core feature of the Philosophy for Children programme so it can provide needed scaffolding for the essential aim of making philosophical progress.

This article aims to present part of the results from the Scientific Initiation research entitled Logical Foundations of Education for Thinking. Specifically, the exposed contents are the logical ones developed by Matthew Lipman in his philosophical novel Harry Stottlemeier’s discovery. The text is divided in three main sections: formal logic, logic of good reasons and logic of rationally acting. In the first one, we map the contents of formal logic present in that novel. In this context, we studied Aristotelian logic in a progressive manner, passing from the simplest elements to the more complex, namely: the categorical propositions, the reversal of categorical propositions, standardization, the table of opposites, the logic of relations and, finally, the Aristotelian syllogism (and the invalid forms of). After that, we deal with other aspects of formal logic worked in Lipman’s view. They are: the hypothetical syllogism, induction, the logical relationship between part and whole, the four possibilities and tautologies. In the second section, we present an approach about the logic of good reasons. Finally, the third and final section, entitled The Logic of rationally acting, the emphasis lies in the constant and daily use of reflection, in other words, we see that the logic of rationally acting is targeting the use of reflective thinking to obtain a reasonable behavior.

The reasonableness is a basic ideal of a philosophical education. Such ideal is especially expressed in “Philosophy for Children” by the notion, still open to multiple interpretations, of “good reasons”. “Being reasonable” means, in its widest sense, the trend, the finely cultivated habit, of giving, asking and evaluating reasons for our thoughts, feelings, actions, words, actions, or wishes. What is demanded of those who participate in a community of inquiry is the permanent effort of searching for the best reasons for what we are, feel, think, say or wish to do. Why are good reasons necessary? How are those reasons to be evaluated? What allows us to distinguish between a good and a bad reason? What are the main characteristics of a good reason? These are some of the main questions I aim to examine in this paper. I begin by trying to clarify what gives rise to the need to give, ask and evaluate reasons. Then I try to answer the question I consider to be central: what is a good reason, or what does one consist of? I conclude my thoughts with some notes on the possibility and meaning of a “logic of good reasons” and on the role it plays in the P4C project. I show the diversity of reasons that can be offered according to the circumstances and the circles of interest in which we move. Since we live simultaneously in different worlds (those of day-to-day life, theory, moral decisions, and who knows what more possible worlds we can create through fantasy), the kind of reasons we must offer in each case may be entirely different. Therefore, the criteria according to which we can evaluate the reasons offered in each context may also be very different. I emphasize that good reasons are, in a great number, intuitive. They are immediate, that is, not mediated by long analysis, but ‘emerge’ in our minds rather ‘spontaneously’. Though good reasons may show up in a rather intuitive way, in general they are supported by a long process of analysis. Good reasons would not be such if they were not timely; therefore, they cannot take too long to show up; pressing circumstances require them to show up swiftly. Nonetheless, they are not produced casually or by chance. As a matter of fact, they are prepared in our permanent exercise of making good judgments, that is, careful, relevant and well enlightened judgments. This implies a process of decomposing a problematic situation into its constitutive parts (i.e. an exercise of analysis), which happens too fast in our minds and shows up finished in those who permanently strive to reason in a sensible and coherent way when confronted with different situations.

This work intends to research the paradox present in the words Philosophy and Childhood. Examined together in this way, the words may seem, for those who are not devoted to this subject, strangely incongruous. The first steps in addressing this combination managed to solve this paradoxical aspect and through the schooling of diverse contents, especially through procedural ones, assured the presence of Philosophy in childhood with a useful purpose. However, the paradox resisted domestication. Philosophy, which is linked to the occidental way of thinking, with a long history of meanings and interpretations and childhood, which on the other hand is so fresh and new in the art of thinking, placed side by side, managed to leak through a gap and challenged the most seductive strategies of domesticity, relating once more, the power of thinking with the force of paradox. Rescuing this sense will be done on the basis of a text from Roig (1998), and from the possibility of visiting “the middle region” characterized by Foucault ( 2008), in his preface to “The Words and the Things” . Roig’s text (1998) is entitled “The Pedagogic Methods and its a propósito de la infância y la filosofia... entre otras paradoxas Insertion in Life”. This book deals with the problem of the methods of learning and proposes to find a relationship in theory and practice in this field.

The reasonableness is a basic ideal of a philosophical education. Such ideal is especially expressed in “Philosophy for Children” by the notion, still open to multiple interpretations, of “good reasons”. “Being reasonable” means, in its widest sense, the trend, the finely cultivated habit, of giving, asking and evaluating reasons for our thoughts, feelings, actions, words, actions, or wishes. What is demanded of those who participate in a community of inquiry is the permanent effort of searching for the best reasons for what we are, feel, think, say or wish to do. Why are good reasons necessary? How are those reasons to be evaluated? What allows us to distinguish between a good and a bad reason? What are the main characteristics of a good reason? These are some of the main questions I aim to examine in this paper. I begin by trying to clarify what gives rise to the need to give, ask and evaluate reasons. Then I try to answer the question I consider to be central: what is a good reason, or what does one consist of? I conclude my thoughts with some notes on the possibility and meaning of a “logic of good reasons” and on the role it plays in the P4C project. I show the diversity of reasons that can be offered according to the circumstances and the circles of interest in which we move. Since we live simultaneously in different worlds (those of day-to-day life, theory, moral decisions, and who knows what more possible worlds we can create through fantasy), the kind of reasons we must offer in each case may be entirely different. Therefore, the criteria according to which we can evaluate the reasons offered in each context may also be very different. I emphasize that good reasons are, in a great number, intuitive. They are immediate, that is, not mediated by long analysis, but ‘emerge’ in our minds rather ‘spontaneously’. Though good reasons may show up in a rather intuitive way, in general they are supported by a long process of analysis. Good reasons would not be such if they were not timely; therefore, they cannot take too long to show up; pressing circumstances require them to show up swiftly. Nonetheless, they are not produced casually or by chance. As a matter of fact, they are prepared in our permanent exercise of making good judgments, that is, careful, relevant and well enlightened judgments. This implies a process of decomposing a problematic situation into its constitutive parts (i.e. an exercise of analysis), which happens too fast in our minds and shows up finished in those who permanently strive to reason in a sensible and coherent way when confronted with different situations.

The text starts with an introductory note in which the author, who has already used the the curriculum she will discuss, clarifies her didactic choices in two ways. Her primary motivation was 1) to assist in the dynamic and multi-dimensional growth of her students’ individual and collective thinking, and of her thinking as well; and, 2) to give them the tools through which they could reach their own potential through continual transformation and renovation of both their individual and social lives. The text begins with the philosophical statements which a group of children have offered in the course a session, which the author connects to the thinking of Wittgenstein, which leads into an inquiry about the relationship between the thinking of the Austrian philosopher and Matthew Lipman. Basic shared themes and analogous approaches are identified in the areas of mysticism, language, and the goals of philosophy. Lipman says, for example, that "Philosophy for Children aims at being a total, thinking-in-language experience," while for Wittgenstein, philosophy is an activity of clarification through language whose purpose is to make thoughts clear via logic. In his Philosophical Investigations, for example, language is understood as a unitary structure that represents a set of relationships, just as in the community of inquiry, dialogue is understood as a set of relationships between multiple meanings. For both philosophers, language restores the relationship between theory and practice, and as such is a social production and an instrument for the transformation of daily behavior. The therapeutic potential that Wittgenstein finds in language can be compared to the potential for reconstruction that the community of inquiry explores through its practice of collective action-research into the construction of meaning and value in everyday life. The capacity for wonder that Lipman attributes to children is seen in relation to Wittgenstein's concern for "what cannot be said," and is understood in both philosophers as the exploration of that mystery which serves as the ground on which and by which everything that we strive to express, to communicate, and to be, acquires a meaning.