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Learning to Philosophize
Learning to Philosophize [Paperback] Emmet, E. R.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
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September 12, 2022Its not as good as I thought it would be and I am low key scared Im not in the mindset yet (even with uni starting). It was a DNF... but most of it was exercises anyways.
February 29, 2024
For those who wonder what philosophers actually philosophize about -- this isn't that. It's about the kind of thinking they do, and how they do it, and how you can do it too and maybe you should, and in just seven chapters.
There are seven chapters, beginning with an Introduction, which says in more detail what I said in that first paragraph.
In the second chapter, Emmet introduces the subject of "Language and Bewitchment," that is, the idea that language can lead us into error by its very nature. In the Introduction, he quotes Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." It is grammatically and semantically reasonable, for example, to ask "Who made the world?" But the question, by making a (not very) hidden assumption, begs itself. Just because you can ask it, does not (necessarily) mean that there is an answer, that there is in fact a Someone who made the world: yet people have been killing each other over their personal answers to that question for centuries, millenia. Equally important, orators, politicians, use language to bring people over to their side without ever thinking about the assumptions being made by that side.
Next is a chapter called "On Concepts," which continues the discussion from the previous chapter, here covering the messy question of what concepts are and what you legitimately can and cannot do with them.
"Asking the Right Questions" could be seen as the antidote to the "Who made the world?" question. Not only can questions have built-in assumptions, they can have built-in unanswerability ("Is the statement 'This statement is false' true or false?"); they can be merely verbal ("is [a particular borderline act] legal or illegal? - which depends solely upon the interpretation of the words of the statutes in question); they can strongly suggest their own answers ("Do you support betraying the Constitution, as that man did?"); and so on.
"Value Judgements" begins with the observation that comparisons can be objective or subjective: you can judge the length of a stick by placing a ruler beside it; but whether it is _better_ than another stick will vary depending on the point-of-view involved. (To whom is it better? For what purpose? Etc.) However, the distinction becomes gray. If I say "I think that this is an excellent stick," I have -- at least ostensibly -- made an objective statement _about_ my subjective opinion. From here Emmet moves to opinions, preferences, and choices; and finally to value judgements themselves. His clearest example is a schoolmaster grading papers. She has to judge the quality of the papers, not only in themselves, but against each other; for example, A's paper is best, B's paper worst, and C's somewhere in between. Then she has to judge what grade to put on each paper. She may have some objective standards to go on (Did the paper address the assigned topic? Are its arguments valid? Does it cite its sources properly? Is it grammatically correct? Is the spelling correct? Is it legible? and so on...), but she still has to decide for herself how well each paper meets each standard. Suppose she gives A 100%, and B 50%; does she then necessarily give C 75%? Is the grading on some sort of curve? Simply comparing the papers, A > C > B, is using an ordinal scale, while giving some number of points, from 0 to 100, involves a cardinal scale... And then there's the question of "expert" opinions, of, for example, beauty or literary quality.
Chapter 6 delves into matters of "Appearance and Reality," with a side trip into "existence." Much of the chapter is spend discussing the British empiricists, mainly Berkeley and Hume. Berkeley reduces the world to sense-impressions, and claims that we know nothing apart from those impressions. (Johnson's famous refutation misses the point, and probably got him a sore foot into the bargain.) Hume goes further and says that we cannot even be sure of those. In brief, he notes that Berkeley is reacting to Locke, and that Kant reacts to Berkeley and Hume. He concludes with a general discussion of what we can and can't reasonably claim to be certain of.
In the final chapter, "Free Will and Determinism," Emmet describes the march of science towards greater predictability of the material world, and how psychology seeks (or sought at the time) to achieve similar predictabiltiy for human behavior. Then he sort of deconstructs (but this book is long before Deconstructionism) the distinction between the free will and determinism, roughly thus: we are free to act how we choose, but our choices are determined by who we are at the moment we make those choices -- and who we are at any moment is in part determined by the choices we have made in the past, along with our history, physical being, and God knows what-all else.
Each chapter concludes with exercises; most also have a few pages of supplemental readings. There are a set of "miscellaneous exercises" after the last chapter. In a last sectioin, he provides, not _answers_ but _comments_ on most (not all) of the exercises; and concludes with an unusual four pages called "Souces of Extracts," which combines aspects of a bibliography and an index. It is unsatisfactory as a bibliography, as it gives only the author and the title, as well as the pages of the book on which each extract begins; it is equally unsatisfactory as an index, as it provides reference only to the extracts, and not to the topics discussed. Very strange; it is what it is. Unless, of course, it isn't.
I found this stimulating reading. YMMV.
There are seven chapters, beginning with an Introduction, which says in more detail what I said in that first paragraph.
In the second chapter, Emmet introduces the subject of "Language and Bewitchment," that is, the idea that language can lead us into error by its very nature. In the Introduction, he quotes Wittgenstein: "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." It is grammatically and semantically reasonable, for example, to ask "Who made the world?" But the question, by making a (not very) hidden assumption, begs itself. Just because you can ask it, does not (necessarily) mean that there is an answer, that there is in fact a Someone who made the world: yet people have been killing each other over their personal answers to that question for centuries, millenia. Equally important, orators, politicians, use language to bring people over to their side without ever thinking about the assumptions being made by that side.
Next is a chapter called "On Concepts," which continues the discussion from the previous chapter, here covering the messy question of what concepts are and what you legitimately can and cannot do with them.
"Asking the Right Questions" could be seen as the antidote to the "Who made the world?" question. Not only can questions have built-in assumptions, they can have built-in unanswerability ("Is the statement 'This statement is false' true or false?"); they can be merely verbal ("is [a particular borderline act] legal or illegal? - which depends solely upon the interpretation of the words of the statutes in question); they can strongly suggest their own answers ("Do you support betraying the Constitution, as that man did?"); and so on.
"Value Judgements" begins with the observation that comparisons can be objective or subjective: you can judge the length of a stick by placing a ruler beside it; but whether it is _better_ than another stick will vary depending on the point-of-view involved. (To whom is it better? For what purpose? Etc.) However, the distinction becomes gray. If I say "I think that this is an excellent stick," I have -- at least ostensibly -- made an objective statement _about_ my subjective opinion. From here Emmet moves to opinions, preferences, and choices; and finally to value judgements themselves. His clearest example is a schoolmaster grading papers. She has to judge the quality of the papers, not only in themselves, but against each other; for example, A's paper is best, B's paper worst, and C's somewhere in between. Then she has to judge what grade to put on each paper. She may have some objective standards to go on (Did the paper address the assigned topic? Are its arguments valid? Does it cite its sources properly? Is it grammatically correct? Is the spelling correct? Is it legible? and so on...), but she still has to decide for herself how well each paper meets each standard. Suppose she gives A 100%, and B 50%; does she then necessarily give C 75%? Is the grading on some sort of curve? Simply comparing the papers, A > C > B, is using an ordinal scale, while giving some number of points, from 0 to 100, involves a cardinal scale... And then there's the question of "expert" opinions, of, for example, beauty or literary quality.
Chapter 6 delves into matters of "Appearance and Reality," with a side trip into "existence." Much of the chapter is spend discussing the British empiricists, mainly Berkeley and Hume. Berkeley reduces the world to sense-impressions, and claims that we know nothing apart from those impressions. (Johnson's famous refutation misses the point, and probably got him a sore foot into the bargain.) Hume goes further and says that we cannot even be sure of those. In brief, he notes that Berkeley is reacting to Locke, and that Kant reacts to Berkeley and Hume. He concludes with a general discussion of what we can and can't reasonably claim to be certain of.
In the final chapter, "Free Will and Determinism," Emmet describes the march of science towards greater predictability of the material world, and how psychology seeks (or sought at the time) to achieve similar predictabiltiy for human behavior. Then he sort of deconstructs (but this book is long before Deconstructionism) the distinction between the free will and determinism, roughly thus: we are free to act how we choose, but our choices are determined by who we are at the moment we make those choices -- and who we are at any moment is in part determined by the choices we have made in the past, along with our history, physical being, and God knows what-all else.
Each chapter concludes with exercises; most also have a few pages of supplemental readings. There are a set of "miscellaneous exercises" after the last chapter. In a last sectioin, he provides, not _answers_ but _comments_ on most (not all) of the exercises; and concludes with an unusual four pages called "Souces of Extracts," which combines aspects of a bibliography and an index. It is unsatisfactory as a bibliography, as it gives only the author and the title, as well as the pages of the book on which each extract begins; it is equally unsatisfactory as an index, as it provides reference only to the extracts, and not to the topics discussed. Very strange; it is what it is. Unless, of course, it isn't.
I found this stimulating reading. YMMV.
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January 1, 2022A really good introduction to key topics in philosophy. My favourite chapters were those on Free Will and Knowledge of Reality which breaks down Berkeley’s subjective idealism really well. Will be reading again, especially to do the exercises.
February 23, 2025
This should have been titled “The Semantics of Philosophy” as the first eighty-four pages are entirely about the subtleties of language and terminology. Two takeaways are: Firstly, most languages have many closely-related words that are often inappropriately or misleadingly interchanged, for example when a couple years back I tried to consciously change my habit of saying “I’m anxious for the package to arrive” when the proper word is not ‘anxious’ but ‘eager’. Anxious connotes an unsettled feeling due to an indeterminate outcome, as in “I’m anxious to learn the outcome of the election.”
Secondly, most Western languages are structured so that people communicate in, and even think in terms of subject, predicate, and time context. As in “The light flashed” wherein light is the subject and flash is the predicate, the entire statement conveying that this happened in the past, and the assumption is that something caused the light to flash. The Hopi would simply use a single word ‘Rehpi’ which means bright flash, without other contextual information, which may be gleaned from the teller’s body language. Not entirely without interest but it was a lot of digging in the weeds for a few buried nuggets. The last fifty pages were an interminable, legalistic exploration of the three differing perspectives of Free Will.
Verdict: For the specialist only; this has no practical application for the average person!
Secondly, most Western languages are structured so that people communicate in, and even think in terms of subject, predicate, and time context. As in “The light flashed” wherein light is the subject and flash is the predicate, the entire statement conveying that this happened in the past, and the assumption is that something caused the light to flash. The Hopi would simply use a single word ‘Rehpi’ which means bright flash, without other contextual information, which may be gleaned from the teller’s body language. Not entirely without interest but it was a lot of digging in the weeds for a few buried nuggets. The last fifty pages were an interminable, legalistic exploration of the three differing perspectives of Free Will.
Verdict: For the specialist only; this has no practical application for the average person!
June 20, 2025
Learning to Philosophize is an old Pelican book that probably went out of print many years ago and can be purchased in a charity shop or second hand bookshop as well as online. It is a book that teaches the reader to become a philosopher with multiple different chapters. Each of the chapters have a work section at the end so it doubles up as a teaching guide for philosophy. The chapters include themes on the philosophy of language, concepts, asking the right questions, value judgement, appearance and reality plus free will. This book makes an excellent albeit old starter book on philosophy.
November 23, 2022
neat little book
August 14, 2025
There are less convoluted ways to explain philosophy. The exercises would have been useful if the explanation was less loaded in jargon and more grounded.
April 1, 2026
For the beginning. Simple but felt over explained. Skimmed some parts, but glad it’s a suggestion from a favourite philosopher, Nisar Ahmed.
July 10, 2012
I have to read this again a few years later for sure. To be honest, I have not comprehended all Emmet's knowledge in this book. But from very small parts of his profound works, I can say he gave very specific examples to explain and prove his arguments. Emmet hinted some good ways to think logically. This book should be a perfect start for any beginner.
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March 18, 2009I will still get back to this book.
December 9, 2011
A very useful little book.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews