Hello everyone and welcome to “Improve Your Thinking.” I’m your host Kevin Browne and I want to help you improve your thinking. How can I help? Well, I’ve been teaching courses in philosophy, logic, and critical thinking for over 25 years and in that time I’ve gained a lot of useful insights that I’m excited to share with you.
In addition to teaching philosophy, I am also a certified philosophical counselor. What does that mean? Basically, it means I use philosophy to help people in very practical ways. As the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein said in his book Philosophical Investigations, “A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way around.” So many problems in life are just like that. We just don’t know our way around. We don’t know what to do or sometimes even how to figure out what options are available. How can philosophy help you find your way around? One way is by using a set of tools for clear thinking called logic or critical thinking and in these podcasts, I’m going to share some of those tools with you and show you how to use them. Another useful technique is simply asking questions. But, not just any questions. Philosophers tend to ask questions that seem obvious on the surface. Socrates was famous for asking such questions and people often had the same reaction to his questions: We already know the answer to that! But, as his questioning showed, we often don’t already know the answer to these seemingly simple questions like What is good? What is beauty? What is justice? We assume we know and based on that assumption we take action. And those actions often lead to problems. This is where philosophy can help. So, we’ll be asking questions and doing some critical thinking. Along the way, I’ll also be sharing some interesting insights from various books I’ve read. Don’t worry I’m not going to be giving boring philosophy lectures about abstract philosophical texts that no one understands. No, I’m going to be sharing insights that will be surprising, startling, and maybe even frustrating to hear. But, they will all be ideas you can use to improve your thinking. From time to time, I’ll also be sharing answers I’ve written to questions posted on the Quora website. I’m also hoping to answer some of your questions as well so feel free to send them along. My daughter once asked me whether I had a motto. I forget what we were talking about that made her think to ask but in fact I do. I use it in my philosophy courses. To think like a philosopher I believe you need to do three things: Ask more questions. Demand better answers. Learn more than you think you need to know. In my experience as a teacher, I have found that students do not ask enough questions. That’s true of people outside of school as well. Be more curious about what’s going on and why. Ask questions like: Why are we doing things this way? Is there a better way? When you are talking with someone whose views are different from yours don’t respond by pointing out how and why they’re wrong. Ask questions to find out what they’re thinking and why. In addition to asking more questions, we also need to demand better answers. This is especially true of our elected officials and others in authority. Too often we accept an answer because it is what we want to hear. it’s what we already agree with. Because of something called the confirmation bias we tend to accept things at face value if we already agree with them. Instead, we need to keep digging, ask more questions, and demand better answers. Don’t be satisfied with the answer you want to hear. Instead, take the time to figure out whether that answer is the most accurate answer. And finally, we all need to learn more than we think we need to know. It’s easy to react to a new idea or unfamiliar subject by saying “I don’t need to know that.” Instead, what if we adopted the perspective that there might be something interesting and useful there to learn. There are things I think I need to know and I learn about them. But, there are also things I don’t think I need to know. As a result, I don’t bother to learn about them. But, what if I’m wrong. What if there are useful insights to be gained that I’m missing out on. I used to think I didn’t need to know about psychology. Turns out I was wrong about that. So much of what I teach in my logic and critical thinking courses is psychological. You can’t really understand what good critical thinking is without understanding some psychology. Of course, you can’t learn everything about everything. But, you can remain open-minded about your learning. And stay curious. But, as Ian Leslie points out in his book titled Curious, "to feel curious, you have to be aware of a gap in your knowledge in the first place. The trouble is, most of us, most of the time, go around thinking we know everything." So, it’s good to remember Wittgenstein’s point: A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way around.” Or to shorten it: I don’t know. So, join me weekly as we explore ideas and ask more questions, demand better answers, and learn more than we think we need to know. If you like the sound of this please subscribe to this weekly podcast and visit me online at kevinjbrowne.com. Thank you for listening and I’ll see you on the next episode!
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kevin j. brownePhilosopher | Educator Archives
July 2022
improve your thinking: The course |