Tools of Thinking – Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason (Video) – James Hall, Ph.D

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Course Overview

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 other words, what is the best way to think?

Everyone has to think in order to function in the world, and this course will equip you with the tools to reason effectively in your pursuit of reliable beliefs and useful knowledge. Whether you are a budding philosopher searching for ultimate truths, a science student grappling with the nature of scientific proof, a new parent weighing conflicting child-rearing advice, or a concerned citizen making up your mind about today’s issues, Tools of Thinking will help you cut through deception and faulty reasoning to get closer to the essence of a matter.

In Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason, Professor Hall turns his friendly but intellectually rigorous approach to the problem of thinking, introducing you to a wide range of effective techniques.

24 Lectures

Average 30 minutes each

1What Are “Tools of Thinking”?

The “tools of thinking” are the devices and processes we use to achieve knowledge. This lecture introduces eight tools: experience, memory, association, pattern discernment and recognition, reason, invention, experimentation, and intuition.

2Which Tools of Thinking Are Basic?

Professor Hall discusses the eight tools of thinking in detail. Reason, experience, invention, and experimentation are particularly important, since we use them to create our languages and make our instruments of investigation.

3Platonic Intuition, Memory, and Reason

Plato subordinated sense experience to the tools of intuition, memory, and reason, believing that knowledge results from uncovering what the mind already knows intuitively.

4Intuition, Memory, and Reason—Problems

We explore some of the major problems with Plato’s reliance on intuition, memory, and reason. Even though Plato’s position makes good use of several basic tools of thinking, it is still inadequate.

5Sense Experience—A More Modern Take

What we see, taste, smell, feel, hear, and read can be unreliable. That means we must exercise great caution when we use such input as a basis for our thoughts.

6Observation and Immediate Inferences

Aristotle recognized the importance of observation. But his primary concern was with what one can rationally infer. This stimulated his interest in the processes and patterns of reason itself, and led to his systematic mapping of what we call logic.

7Further Immediate Inferences

We continue our investigation of Aristotle’s logic by looking at what more can be inferred from a single categorical proposition. The “square of opposition” is a powerful arrangement for analyzing immediate inferences that can be drawn from the truth or falsity of a single proposition.

8Categorical Syllogisms

A categorical syllogism consists of three categorical propositions: two premises and a conclusion. We learn how to place a categorical syllogism in “standard form” and how to analyze it in terms of “mood” and “figure.”

9Ancient Logic in Modern Dress

Some classes have no members; for example, the class of unicorns. This creates problems because we don’t always know whether a class is populated or not. We look at how developments by logicians George Boole and John Venn help deal with this issue.

10Systematic Doubt and Rational Certainty

We recapitulate some of the reasons for calling sense experience into question, in light of the “systematic doubt” of the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes.

11The Limits of Sense Experience

What content for thought does sense experience, by itself, provide? This lecture probes the views of David Hume, who argued that we have no sensations of causation as such, casting doubt on our ability to use inductive reasoning to gain demonstrable truths about the world.

12Inferences Demand Relevant Evidence

Inferences that rely on irrelevant “evidence” commit non sequitur in one form or another. In this lecture, we explore descriptions and examples of seven forms that such bad reasoning can take.

13Proper Inferences Avoid Equivocation

In relying on experiences as evidence for our inferences, we must avoid making unwarranted presumptions. Otherwise, we may be guilty of fallacies of presumption and ambiguity—eight examples of which are given.

14Induction Is Slippery but Unavoidable

After making a pragmatic assumption about the regularity of nature, we look at John Stuart Mill’s classic analysis of the inductive methods of agreement, difference, residues and concomitant variation. These are illustrated with examples to help clarify what induction can do and what it can’t.

15The Scientific Revolution

Focusing on the methods and ideas of Isaac Newton, we explore three factors that are essential for the generation of a prediction, which is the hallmark of modern science.

16Hypotheses and Experiments—A First Look

Irresponsible hypothesis construction is hard to distinguish from mere speculation. Responsible hypotheses are grounded in testing and experimentation. Hypotheses that are grounded and confirmed in this way generate covering laws.

17How Empirical Is Modern Empiricism?

Direct observations and inferences generated from them are possible at the macro level. However, a different kind of empirical link is required at the micro level where direct observation is impossible. In that case, hypotheses must be constructed and inferences from them need only be confirmed by empirical observation. This opens the door to theoretical imagination, creativity, and conceptual invention.

18Hypotheses and Experiments—A Closer Look

There are at least two uses for experiments that are of interest to modern rational empiricists. Some are aimed at discovering patterns that will help generate descriptive and explanatory knowledge. Others are aimed at testing the theories that we entertain, so as to confirm or disconfirm them.

19“Normal Science” at Mid-Century

In the middle of the 20th century, the vision of “normal science” was rooted in the movement called logical positivism, with contributions by logicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers.

20Modern Logic—Truth Tables

Whether we hypothesize, discover, or create the mathematics, covering laws, and state descriptions that we use in explaining what we observe, we need a reliable apparatus for drawing inferences from them. This is provided by modern logic.

21Modern Logic—Sentential Arguments

We continue our examination of the techniques of modern logic used in complex derivations, with a look at replacement rules, such as DeMorgan’s theorems, and rules of inference, such as modus ponens.

22Modern Logic—Predicate Arguments

In contrast to sentential logic, which treats simple sentences as unanalyzed units, predicate logic involves the analysis of the internal structure of subject/predicate sentences. We look at the tools that allow us to solve predicate arguments far beyond the scope of Aristotelian syllogistic.

23Postmodern and New-Age Problems

Modern rational empiricism is not problem-free. For instance, we know that observations themselves are theory laden. Further, if the general culture determines what those ideas and theories are, then even our simplest descriptions are culturally relative. These are central themes of postmodernism.

24Rational Empiricism in the 21st Century

The tools of thinking are available to all. There are useful places to put them to use if we will spend the efforts to master them. The systematic study of logic, science, mathematics, history, and even philosophy, are all good places to start.

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