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Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason
PART 1 and 2 each contain 12 lectures/30 minutes per lecture (6 tapes per part) Each part contains course guide book. The lecture series is by Professor James Hall. The James Thomas Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy athe University of Richmond where he taught for 40 years.
12 pages, Audio Cassette
First published January 28, 2005
About the author
James Hall
5 books6 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
See this thread for more information.
James Hall is the James Thomas Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of Richmond, where he taught for 40 years until his retirement in 2005. He received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his Masters of Theology from Southeastern Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
At the University of Richmond, Professor Hall was named Omicron Delta Kappa Faculty Member of the Year (2005), Student Government Association Faculty Member of the Year (2005), and he received the University Distinguished Educator Award (2001). He has written many articles and essays and is the author of three books: Knowledge, Belief and Transcendence; Logic Problems; and Practically Profound: Putting Philosophy to Work in Everyday Life. Professor Hall's first course with the Teaching Company was Philosophy of Religion."
Professor Hall specializes in 20th-century analytic philosophy, epistemology, logical empiricism, and the philosophy of religion. At Richmond, he was noted for developing cross-disciplinary courses combining physics, chemistry, economics, psychology, and literature with his own field of philosophy.
See this thread for more information.
James Hall is the James Thomas Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at the University of Richmond, where he taught for 40 years until his retirement in 2005. He received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, his Masters of Theology from Southeastern Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
At the University of Richmond, Professor Hall was named Omicron Delta Kappa Faculty Member of the Year (2005), Student Government Association Faculty Member of the Year (2005), and he received the University Distinguished Educator Award (2001). He has written many articles and essays and is the author of three books: Knowledge, Belief and Transcendence; Logic Problems; and Practically Profound: Putting Philosophy to Work in Everyday Life. Professor Hall's first course with the Teaching Company was Philosophy of Religion."
Professor Hall specializes in 20th-century analytic philosophy, epistemology, logical empiricism, and the philosophy of religion. At Richmond, he was noted for developing cross-disciplinary courses combining physics, chemistry, economics, psychology, and literature with his own field of philosophy.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 17, 2011
The first part of the course was very interesting and worthwhile. However, from around the midpoint of the course and until the end, I felt it was of very little practical value. I feel a bit disappointed in the course in this regard. It felt empty with little practical value/content and the title of the course seemed misleading. But then, the things that I did learn were interesting and what I’ve been curious about, like the root and development of modern science; induction vs deduction; general knowledge on different philosophers’ contributions; and so on. Near the end, I felt like I didn't have a reason to learn the stuff presented (eg. advanced forms of tools involving truth tables and whatnot).
December 24, 2008
your basic and historic look at logic and philosophy
July 4, 2021
Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World Through Experience and Reason
by James Hall
The professor has a combined background in science and philosophy. At the start, the profess identifies four crucial tools in thinking: intuition, memory, reason, and association. This collection was mentioned several times. However, the course really focuses on the relationship between experience and reason in understanding the world.
The course started by discussing the epistemologies of Plato and Aristotle. Plato thinks all knowledge is from “intuition” that is given to people without their effort. People just need to escape from the “shackle in the cave” and reestablish their connection with the Ideal. Aristotle, on the other hand, thinks knowledge is from observation and experience. People form ideas by organizing their experiences to establish a world-view. Both of them value the reasoning process and a critical step in gaining knowledge.
The course then contrasts rationalism and empiricism. Both regard, respectively, reason and experience as the primary source of knowledge while holding an intense skepticism against the other. The discussion leads to modern empiricism, which is today’s methodology in science. Under this doctrine, experience and reason interact and advance in tandem. Reason is based on experience, and it, in turn, provides a framework for experience interpretation. People form hypotheses, which can be inductions from limited experience or cooked-up theories to explain the experiences. Hypotheses are verified (or falsified) by more experiences, often in the form of designed and controlled experiments. Both experiences and reasoning are fallible; we expect future work will make our understanding closer to reality. We also have some guiding principles to filter the hypotheses that we will take seriously. One is Popper’s theory of falsification, which says any scientific theory must identify a set of possible experiences that can falsify it. Namely, they can be put to the test by experience. The other principle is Occam’s razor, which says one should use a minimal set of hypotheses to explain given experiences. Given the same explanation power, one should choose the hypotheses that are the simplest and least controversial.
Another part of the course is on formal logic. The teacher started with the logic system of Aristotle and Euclid. He then moved to the modern logic theories based on truth tables and Boolean algebra. The modern logic system can capture and process more complex logical relationships. One key in logic discourse is distinguishing the set (“all” and “some”), for which the Van Diagram is a valuable tool. The professor also briefly discussed several common logic fallacies, although they are not discussed in the context of logic theories.
Overall, the course provides interesting perspectives. However, it does not teach anything more than standard scientific methods at the college level. The title of the course is too broad. For example, the book does not cover all “thinking” activities, only those related to scientific works.
by James Hall
The professor has a combined background in science and philosophy. At the start, the profess identifies four crucial tools in thinking: intuition, memory, reason, and association. This collection was mentioned several times. However, the course really focuses on the relationship between experience and reason in understanding the world.
The course started by discussing the epistemologies of Plato and Aristotle. Plato thinks all knowledge is from “intuition” that is given to people without their effort. People just need to escape from the “shackle in the cave” and reestablish their connection with the Ideal. Aristotle, on the other hand, thinks knowledge is from observation and experience. People form ideas by organizing their experiences to establish a world-view. Both of them value the reasoning process and a critical step in gaining knowledge.
The course then contrasts rationalism and empiricism. Both regard, respectively, reason and experience as the primary source of knowledge while holding an intense skepticism against the other. The discussion leads to modern empiricism, which is today’s methodology in science. Under this doctrine, experience and reason interact and advance in tandem. Reason is based on experience, and it, in turn, provides a framework for experience interpretation. People form hypotheses, which can be inductions from limited experience or cooked-up theories to explain the experiences. Hypotheses are verified (or falsified) by more experiences, often in the form of designed and controlled experiments. Both experiences and reasoning are fallible; we expect future work will make our understanding closer to reality. We also have some guiding principles to filter the hypotheses that we will take seriously. One is Popper’s theory of falsification, which says any scientific theory must identify a set of possible experiences that can falsify it. Namely, they can be put to the test by experience. The other principle is Occam’s razor, which says one should use a minimal set of hypotheses to explain given experiences. Given the same explanation power, one should choose the hypotheses that are the simplest and least controversial.
Another part of the course is on formal logic. The teacher started with the logic system of Aristotle and Euclid. He then moved to the modern logic theories based on truth tables and Boolean algebra. The modern logic system can capture and process more complex logical relationships. One key in logic discourse is distinguishing the set (“all” and “some”), for which the Van Diagram is a valuable tool. The professor also briefly discussed several common logic fallacies, although they are not discussed in the context of logic theories.
Overall, the course provides interesting perspectives. However, it does not teach anything more than standard scientific methods at the college level. The title of the course is too broad. For example, the book does not cover all “thinking” activities, only those related to scientific works.
February 6, 2023
I'm sorry that I had to rush through this one (audiobook being taken off Audible Plus), because it's a lot of logical concepts that I have a cursory understanding of, but hope to explore further someday.
March 28, 2008
This is an engaging historical overview of the development of modern rational empiricism. Listening to it created a desire in me to learn more about philosophy in general, which is not something that had ever occured to me before.
March 2, 2016
Excellent and compelling Audiobook. Mr Hall is one of the more erudite speakers I have ever heard.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews