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Thinking to Some Purpose
"I am convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance. Our failures in thinking are in part due to faults which we could to some extent overcome were we to see clearly how these faults arise. It is the aim of this book to make a small effort in this direction." - Susan Stebbing, from the Preface
Despite huge advances in education, knowledge and communication, it can often seem we are neither well-trained nor well practised in the art of clear thinking. Our powers of reasoning and argument are less confident that they should be, we frequently ignore evidence and we are all too often swayed by rhetoric rather than reason. But what can you do to think and argue better?
First published in 1939 but unavailable for many years, Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is a classic first-aid manual of how to think clearly, and remains astonishingly fresh and insightful. Written against a background of the rise of dictatorships and the collapse of democracy in Europe, it is packed with useful tips and insights. Stebbing offers shrewd advice on how to think critically and clearly, how to spot illogical statements and slipshod thinking, and how to rely on reason rather than emotion. At a time when we are again faced with serious threats to democracy and freedom of thought, Stebbing’s advice remains as urgent and important as ever.
This Routledge edition of Thinking to Some Purpose includes a new Foreword by Nigel Warburton and a helpful Introduction by Peter West, who places Susan Stebbing’s classic book in historical and philosophical context.
Despite huge advances in education, knowledge and communication, it can often seem we are neither well-trained nor well practised in the art of clear thinking. Our powers of reasoning and argument are less confident that they should be, we frequently ignore evidence and we are all too often swayed by rhetoric rather than reason. But what can you do to think and argue better?
First published in 1939 but unavailable for many years, Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is a classic first-aid manual of how to think clearly, and remains astonishingly fresh and insightful. Written against a background of the rise of dictatorships and the collapse of democracy in Europe, it is packed with useful tips and insights. Stebbing offers shrewd advice on how to think critically and clearly, how to spot illogical statements and slipshod thinking, and how to rely on reason rather than emotion. At a time when we are again faced with serious threats to democracy and freedom of thought, Stebbing’s advice remains as urgent and important as ever.
This Routledge edition of Thinking to Some Purpose includes a new Foreword by Nigel Warburton and a helpful Introduction by Peter West, who places Susan Stebbing’s classic book in historical and philosophical context.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
289 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 30, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 12, 2024
The book is billed as a first aid kit of clear thinking.
This book is a highly accessible field guide to spotting and avoiding bad argumentation. There are so many ways that argumentation and thinking can go wrong. Among those that Stebbing discusses are poor choices of language and insufficient attention to meaning and definition. Another is what she called “potted thinking,” which is the mindless circulation of worn truisms that have the appearance of being reasoned statements and contributions but are really so devoid of actual, intentional application that they add very little sustenance to a discussion. Potted thinking is to actual thinking what potted meat is to actual meat (it’s where she got the term). She also warns of propaganda, emotional thinking, poor and misleading illustrations and analogies, exaggeration, appeals to the self-evidence of numbers, and digression.
She also has some hard words for charismatic speakers who spend more time “persuading” than they do “convincing.” The difference is that persuasion is a form of sophistry whereby weak arguments are inflated by moving audiences to beliefs based not on the soundness of the arguments but on the appeal of the presentation. Convincing an audience requires presenting them with the facts, completely, and without distortion. With guidance and time, an audience will work through sound arguments and become convinced of the truth. I understand and am maybe sympathetic to this view of rhetoric as being manipulative but 1) rhetoric is essential to argumentation, and 2) even the most transparent and logical argumentation is rhetorical in that it relies on first moving the audience to accept a particular way of understanding the relationship between statements and the conditions of the world that allow those statements to be true.
Stebbing is an interesting but overlooked historical figure. She can be placed squarely in the tradition of analytic philosophy, having been trained, in part, at Cambridge. She was also the first woman in the UK to have been appointed a full professor in philosophy at Bedford College. She was active between WWI and WWII and was apparently well respected in her time.
This book is a highly accessible field guide to spotting and avoiding bad argumentation. There are so many ways that argumentation and thinking can go wrong. Among those that Stebbing discusses are poor choices of language and insufficient attention to meaning and definition. Another is what she called “potted thinking,” which is the mindless circulation of worn truisms that have the appearance of being reasoned statements and contributions but are really so devoid of actual, intentional application that they add very little sustenance to a discussion. Potted thinking is to actual thinking what potted meat is to actual meat (it’s where she got the term). She also warns of propaganda, emotional thinking, poor and misleading illustrations and analogies, exaggeration, appeals to the self-evidence of numbers, and digression.
She also has some hard words for charismatic speakers who spend more time “persuading” than they do “convincing.” The difference is that persuasion is a form of sophistry whereby weak arguments are inflated by moving audiences to beliefs based not on the soundness of the arguments but on the appeal of the presentation. Convincing an audience requires presenting them with the facts, completely, and without distortion. With guidance and time, an audience will work through sound arguments and become convinced of the truth. I understand and am maybe sympathetic to this view of rhetoric as being manipulative but 1) rhetoric is essential to argumentation, and 2) even the most transparent and logical argumentation is rhetorical in that it relies on first moving the audience to accept a particular way of understanding the relationship between statements and the conditions of the world that allow those statements to be true.
Stebbing is an interesting but overlooked historical figure. She can be placed squarely in the tradition of analytic philosophy, having been trained, in part, at Cambridge. She was also the first woman in the UK to have been appointed a full professor in philosophy at Bedford College. She was active between WWI and WWII and was apparently well respected in her time.
May 22, 2025
fue horrible
May 22, 2025
este libro me dio ganas de no tener pensamiento critico (chiste)
June 24, 2024
Same themes as in early critical theory but Stebbing writes from the 1930s analytic Cambridge school. Chapters on propaganda are clearly a big influence for Jason Stanley
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews