Tools Of Thinking Guidebook.pdf

Tools of Thinking:

Understanding the World through

Experience and Reason

Part I

Professor James Hall

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

James H. Hall, Ph.D.

Thomas Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, University of Richmond

Born in Weimar, Texas, in 1933, I spent my early childhood there and in New Orleans, Louisiana. Just before

World War II, my family moved to Washington, D.C. I lived in that city and received my education from its public

schools, museums, and newspapers, until I went off to college in Baltimore, Maryland, in the fall of 1951.

I knew that I wanted to teach by the time I graduated from high school, but I didn’t know what I wanted to teach

until much later. So I made a career of being a student for 12 more years (at Johns Hopkins University, Southeastern

Theological Seminary, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), before trying to earn a living full time.

I had discovered my discipline by 1959, but it was 1965 before I found my school and my city. Each of the 40 years

since then has confirmed my good fortune in joining the University of Richmond community and putting my roots

down.

Teaching is my calling and first professional priority. I am especially gratified to have been declared “Outstanding

Faculty Member of the Year” by both Omicron Delta Kappa and the Student Government of the University of

Richmond at the end of my last year in the classroom. With 44 years at the blackboard, I have taught most of the

standard undergraduate philosophy curriculum, including Symbolic Logic , Moral Issues , and Philosophical

Problems to thousands of beginners and advanced courses and seminars on Analytic Philosophy (especially the

works of Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Austin), Philosophy of Religion , and Epistemology to hundreds of

philosophy majors and minors. I have also pursued a number of issues beyond the boundaries of philosophy per se,

in interdisciplinary courses as varied as Science and Values ; The Ideological Roots of the American Revolution ; and

Science, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal . My research has produced an adult education series for The Teaching

Company ( Philosophy of Religion ) and three published books ( Knowledge, Belief and Transcendence ; Logic

Problems ; and Practically Profound ), with another in progress ( Taking the Dark Side Seriously ).

A life totally confined to the ivied tower would be truncated and precarious. My own is constantly expanded and

kept in balance by ongoing involvements in church (Episcopal), politics (Democratic), and choral music (from Bach

to Durafle, with just a dash of Ralph Vaughan Williams) and by travel (Wales or the Pacific northwest for

preference) and a daily bout with the New York Times crossword. Many people outside of the academy have

enriched my life by their work—Herblock and Harry Truman, John D. MacDonald and David Lodge, to name

four—and others by their friendship and character—chief among them my wife, Myfanwy, and my sons,

Christopher, Jonathan, and Trevor.

My complete track record, academic and otherwise, can be seen on the Web at: http://www.richmond.edu/~jhall/.

E-mail will always reach me at: jhall@richmond.edu.

Table of Contents

Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason

Part I

Professor Biography ............................................................................................i

Course Scope .......................................................................................................1

Lecture One What Are “Tools of Thinking”? ................................2

Lecture Two Which Tools of Thinking Are Basic? ........................4

Lecture Three Platonic Intuition, Memory, and Reason ...................6

Lecture Four Intuition, Memory, and Reason—Problems ..............8

Lecture Five Sense Experience—A More Modern Take..............10

Lecture Six Observation and Immediate Inferences ...................12

Lecture Seven Further Immediate Inferences..................................15

Lecture Eight Categorical Syllogisms ............................................17

Lecture Nine Ancient Logic in Modern Dress ..............................20

Lecture Ten Systematic Doubt and Rational Certainty................24

Lecture Eleven The Limits of Sense Experience ..............................26

Lecture Twelve Inferences Demand Relevant Evidence ...................28

Timeline .............................................................................................................30

Glossary .............................................................................................................35

Biographical Notes ............................................................................................41

Bibliography ......................................................................................................46

Tools of Thinking: Understanding the World through Experience and Reason

Scope:

Whenever we decide to do a little thinking, a variety of tools are available for the enterprise. Perhaps we will try to

remember what we already know or believe (regardless of how we came by it). Perhaps we will try to deduce

something from what we already know or believe. Perhaps we will engage in the give and take of dialectic. Perhaps

we will try to identify patterns in what we already know or believe (and remember) that would allow us to

generalize it or extrapolate from it to claims of broad (or even universal) scope. Perhaps we will give free rein to the

flow of our ideas, allowing them to call one another before the mind’s eye in some pattern of association. Perhaps

we will turn to sense experience and experimentation to provide the raw materials for some belief or knowing.

Perhaps we will invent a model, hypothesis, metaphor, or rule to try to hang all or part of what we believe or know

together in some systematic way. Or perhaps we will engage in a vigorous round of hypothesis and counterexample.

Whatever tools we use, it is likely that we will, at some point, appeal to “intuition” to back up the general enterprise

or some particular foundational piece of it. Whatever tools we use, of course, will involve some risks.

The purpose of this course is to trace out in a semi-historical way how modern rational empiricism has arrived at its

tool kit for thinking (a tool kit particularly well modeled by modern natural science but also employed in a wide

variety of other, everyday, enterprises). We will look at some of the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, and

Newton, interspersed with some representative attention to the methods and limitations of classical syllogistic logic,

modern sentential and predicate logic, and Mill’s theory of induction. We will also note the necessity of making

room for conceptual invention when setting up general principles to organize our thoughts and give close attention

to the crucial roles of hypothesis construction and experimentation in the thinking of modern rational empiricists.

As we work through these matters, we will note the frequent occurrence of broadly skeptical ideas about the very

possibility of thinking reliably. These include Plato’s mistrust of appearances, Descartes’ mistrust of sense

experience, Hume’s mistrust of all general claims, the logical empiricists’ mistrust of any claim that is untestable,

and postmodern concerns about paradigms and paradigm shifts and the extent to which our thinking is controlled by

the culture in which we find ourselves. The purpose of this course, however, is not the refutation of general or

systematic skepticism. I have dealt with that in another work— see my Practically Profound (Lanham: Roman and

Littlefield, 2005), Part I (Belief) and Part II (Knowledge). The present concern, rather, is to show how the various

tools that we use in our thinking can lead us to generally reliable (not perfect) beliefs and useful (not certain)

knowledge. Further, while any number of thinkers would add revelation and faith to the items set out in the first

paragraph here, the purpose of this course does not include the systematic examination of such matters. (I have dealt

with them in my Teaching Company course of 2003, Philosophy of Religion ). The present concern, rather, is to

explore the tools that are appropriate to more mundane matters, such as science, history, and navigating the

everyday vicissitudes of life.

One thing will emerge from these reflections: There is no one tool for thinking. Experience by itself begets chaos in

the absence of pattern recognition, memory, association, and some form of reasoning. Reason by itself is sterile

absent some practically reliable bases from which to draw our inferences, explanations, and generalizations.

Intuition by itself offers no decision procedure. Invention by itself is dangerously speculative. The magic is in the

mix.

Because this course is a broad and rapid survey of vast and complex matters, it will not answer all (or even most) of

the questions that will occur to you along the way about the mind, our sensory apparatus, belief, knowledge,

reasoning, and logic, much less about mathematics, science, philosophy, ethics, and all the other great systematic

ventures of the mind. It will, however, deal with some of the important ones and provide references to works where

many of the others can be explored. It is a starting point, not a destination.

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