#Care more than others think is wise how to#

In fact, they reveal a self-awareness and honesty that helped them to excel. Mary Warnock was another philosopher with a keen sense of humility, saying: “I haven’t done very much work and I haven’t done it very well.”īoth women’s remarks sound ludicrously self-deprecating to anyone who knows their work. Yet she told me, “I couldn’t give a five-minute lecture on dozens of philosophers.

Philippa Foot was one of the best British philosophers of the 20th century. “I’m not clever, I don’t find arguments easy to follow.” Philippa Foot The family’s reasoning was flawless: it was their premises that were wrong. Why would a family think a drunk relative was a suitable babysitter, but only until they discovered she was an atheist? Their conclusion is rational if you think that the risk of being led into hell is worse than the risk of being harmed through negligence. Janet Radcliffe Richards believes the best way to understand any position is to ask what assumptions would make it rational.

But there were more serious, less easily dismissed arguments, and those were the ones that most demanded a response.Īpplying the principle of charity can expose flaws as well as strengths. If you were a remainer during the EU referendum campaign, for example, it would have been all too easy to brush aside some of the crass claims made by the official leave side. This may be a better case than they themselves can muster. This requires us to consider the best, strongest version of an opponent’s argument, not only the worst.

To avoid what David Hume called the “vulgar error” of “putting nothing but nonsense into the Mouth of the Adversary” we should employ the principle of charity. The best way to understand any position is to ask what assumptions would make it rational But just as we are not as smart as we like to think we are, other people are not usually as stupid as we take them to be. It’s easier to dismiss people we disagree with if we attribute to them obviously foolish or stupid beliefs. “People’s real reasons for reaching their practical conclusions are so often not the ones they give in their arguments.” Janet Radcliffe Richards Sincerity in thought therefore requires overcoming an ego that hates admitting being wrong. The most dangerous enemy of sincerity is not deliberate deception but the desire to be right overpowering the desire to get to the truth. One such philosopher, Bernard Williams, identified sincerity as one of the two primary “virtues of truth”, alongside accuracy. But the best thinkers avoid wrangling or cavilling. Sometimes philosophy descends into adversarial combat. But in good or honest discussion, vada, the aim is truth. In jalpa (wrangling) the aim is victory, while vitanda (cavilling) is concerned wholly with criticising the other side. Gautama distinguishes between three kinds of debate.

“A wrangler is one who aims only at victory, being indifferent whether the arguments which he employs support his own contention or that of his opponent.” Akapāda Gautama Written some time between the sixth and second centuries BCE, supposedly by Akapāda Gautama, the Indian classic the Nyāya Sūtras is the first great treatise on the principles of reasoning.

#Care more than others think is wise how to#

Rather than start from scratch, why not draw on thousands of years of experience, and millions of hours of reflection and practice? Here is what some of the greatest philosophers in history can tell us about how to think – and live – well. Throughout history wise men and women have applied themselves to these problems in the service of their own development and that of humankind.

Without these “intellectual virtues” even the cleverest end up merely playing theoretical games. Thinking well also requires adopting the right attitudes and being prepared to nurture effective habits. But philosophy cannot be reduced to mere technique. Their discipline is often portrayed as a kind of formal method that lists fallacies to be avoided and distinguishes between deductive and inductive reasoning, invalid and sound arguments. Philosophers are, of course, the archetypal expert thinkers. If we don’t know how to distinguish bad thinking from good, we can end up believing what we shouldn’t, and behaving in ways that are harmful to ourselves, to others, and to the planet. But our imperfect minds have also generated terrible mistakes and dangerous ideologies. This is what has given rise to our diverse cultures, our scientific achievements, our ability to envisage the future and, hopefully, make it better than what has gone before. The thing that separates human beings from other animals is our extraordinary capacity for complex, abstract thought.