A practical five-layer framework to build questions that change how minds work: Clarifying → Causal → Ethical → Transformational → Meta.
By Mohammad Amir Khusru Akhtar · PhiloMind™
Start with a flat question (“Should school start later?”), spiral it across five layers—definitions, causes, ethics, redesign, and blind spots—to expose systems, values, and frames.
Outcome: not memory training—perception training.
CLARIFYING — What do we mean by “start”? CAUSAL — Why do schools start early now? ETHICAL — Is it fair to teenagers' sleep? TRANSFORMATIONAL — What could flex-time look like? META — Why do we always adjust time, not format?
Tip: paste this into your meeting doc or journal; run 10–15 minutes per spiral.
We don’t lack information—we face a crisis of interpretation. Spiral offers structure without rigidity, depth without dogma, motion without collapse.
Use these tools freely under CC BY-SA 4.0. Attribute “Spiral Question Ladder — Shunya Publications”.
Yes — Spiral mandates Ethical and Meta layers and uses recursion (loop-backs). It’s a portable loop for classrooms, meetings, coaching, and strategy.
Absolutely. See the templates and facilitation guides in the ZIP; start with 60–90 minute spirals or “micro-spirals” (Ethical→Meta).
Email: hello@shunyapublications.com (replace with your preferred address).