Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason

by James Hall

Streaming audio, 2005

Status

Available

Call number

153.42

Collections

Publication

The Great Courses (2005), 12 hours, 24 lectures, 155 pages

Description

Everyone has to think in order to function in the world, but what is the best way to reason effectively in your pursuit of reliable beliefs and useful knowledge? What is the best way to prove a case, create a rule, solve a problem, justify an idea, invent a hypothesis, or evaluate an argument? In short, what is the best way to think? Professor Hall helps you cut through deception and faulty reasoning in these 24 humorous, clear, and interesting lectures, offering a friendly but intellectually rigorous approach to the problem of thinking. Among the topics you'll learn about are: Deduction (this form of reasoning reaches a conclusion based on a set of premises; if the premises are true, then the conclusion necessarily follows); Induction (less ironclad than deduction, this approach surveys the evidence and then generalizes an explanation to account for it; the conclusion may be probable, but it is not certain); Syllogism ( this simple but powerful deductive argument offers two premises and a conclusion, e.g., "All Greeks are mortals. All Athenians are Greeks. Therefore, all Athenians are mortals."); Dialectic (a question-and-answer dialogue, called dialectic, is valuable for uncovering first principles); Venn diagrams (this technique uses overlapping circles to represent different classes of objects or ideas in order to clarify a syllogism). Some of the greatest philosophers who ever lived have used these tools to separate ideas that make sense from those that don't. Now you, too, can think more clearly, making better lives for ourselves and for those to come.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member aulsmith
A very interesting course. It basically takes a historical look at the roots of modern rational empiricism and its critics. Starting with the Greeks, he moves through Descartes and into the 19th century rationalists, not spending a lot of time on each of them, but highlighting what they contributed
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to the way we view thinking. He spends a lot of time on logic and symbolic logic, always interests of mine. He also gives you a good understanding of what science does, how it does it, and what its limits are. More important, he discusses the tools that are available to individuals in their own thinking process and the limits of those tools.
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Language

Original language

English

ISBN

1598030825 / 9781598030822

Local notes

[01] What are "tools of thinking"? [02] Which tools of thinking are basic? [03] Platonic intuition, memory, and reason [04] Intuition, memory, and reason: problems [05] Sense experience: a more modern take [06] Observation and immediate inferences [07] Further immediate inferences [08] Categorical syllogisms [09] Ancient logic in modern dress [10] Systematic doubt and rational certainty [11] The limits of sense experience [12] Inferences demand relevant evidence [13] Proper inferences avoid equivocation [14] Induction is slippery but unavoidable [15] The scientific revolution [16] Hypotheses and experiments: a first look [17] How empirical is modern empiricism? [18] Hypotheses and experiments: a closer look [19] "Normal science" at mid-century [20] Modern logic: truth tables [21] Modern logic: sentential arguments [22] Modern logic: predicate arguments [23] Postmodern and New-age problems [24] Rational empiricism in the 21st century

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