Think - Simon Blackburn Flashcards
Introduction
Philosophy = conceptual engineering. Philosophy studies the structure of thought
Our concepts or ideas form the mental housing in which we live.
The book can be augmented by reading these classics:
Meditations - Descartes
Three Dialogues - Berkeley
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion - Hume
What gives rise to baffling questions such as ‘what am I?’ and ‘what is consciousness?’ SELF-REFLECTION
Human beings are relentlessly capable of reflecting on themselves. We are looking at the scaffolding of our thought, and doing conceptual engineering.
How is philosophy learned? A better question is: how can thinking skills be acquired?
The thinking in question involves attending to basic structures of thought i.e. it’s not WHAT we think but HOW we think
To process thoughts well is a matter of being able to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities, keep things in mind one at a time, make reliable arguments, become aware of alternatives, and so on.
Our ideas and concepts can be compared with the lens through which we see the world. In philosophy the lens is itself the topic of study.
Success will mean taking seriously the implications of ideas.
What is the point?
High ground response:
We want to reflect for ITS OWN SAKE. There is no eye on practical applications.
The time we take out to read Plato or Jane Austen is time to be cherished. It is the time in which we cosset our mental health.
Middle ground response:
Reflection matters because it is continuous with practice. Our practice can go worse or better according to the value of our reflections.
For example, fatalism - the belief that the future is fixed whatever we do - is a purely philosophical belief, but it can paralyse action. Putting it more politically, it can express an acquiescence with the low status accorded to some segments of society, and this may be a pay-off for people of higher status who encourage it.
Reflection on the nature of knowledge - what philosophers call an epistemological inquiry, from the Greek episteme, meaning knowledge - generated the first spectacular leap of modern science.
Low ground response:
There are always people telling us what we want, how they will provide it, and what we should believe. Convictions are infectious, and people can make others convinced of almost anything. It is ideas for which people kill each other.
When these beliefs involve the sleep of reason, critical awakening is the antidote.
Many people are outraged by philosophical questions. Many want to stand upon the ‘politics of identity’ that invites them to turn their back on outsiders who question the ways of the group.
Reflection opens the avenue to criticism and tradition and authority may not like criticism.
In this way ideologies become closed circles, primed to feel outraged by the questioning mind.
For the last two thousand years the philosophical tradition has been the enemy of this kind of cosy complacency. It has insisted that the unexamined life is not worth living.
Learning to think critically is a matter of self-respect and intellectual integrity. We are diminished intellectually when we allow others to do our thinking for us and when we are incapable of uncovering logical flaws in another’s arguments.
As the philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes noted, the mind tends to effortlessly and automatically take in ideas and information without intellectual filters.
There are people who question the very notion of truth, reason or the possibility of disinterested reflection.
Mostly, they do bad philosophy, often without even knowing that this is what they are doing: conceptual engineers who cannot draw a plan, let alone design a structure.
We must stand unashamedly with the tradition and against any modern scepticism about the value of reflection.
Chapter One - Knowledge
