Thinking with others

- As you watch this course, you'll notice something that might strike you as a little strange. Rather than just giving you a list of potential biases or mistakes in reasoning, I'll also talk a lot about thinking with others. AKA, talking with others. Often when we talk about thinking and improving our thinking, it's something you do by yourself. You sit in a room with totally blank walls at an empty desk or maybe a desk with like a really big book on it and you think. Okay, maybe it's not quite that extreme but we're often talking about and working with this model of the thinker as someone who does most of the hard work of thinking on their own. And we do do some of our thinking alone, of course. But I want you to keep in mind all the ways in which thinking happens with others. So much of what we believe or care about or are committed to is the result of other people, whether that's our friends and family, our online community, or people who died a really long time ago but wrote down all of their ideas for us. One of my favorite things I've learned is that the Greek word logos, which often gets translated just as reasoning is also the word for speech. So the thinking you do is in the context of a language, which you've learned and which you've practiced through speaking with others. Thinking and speaking in other words aren't that far apart. So when you want to become a better thinker, you would also do well to try to become a better communicator. After all, one of the gold standards in thinking is clarity. We want our thoughts to make sense, to be clear but you should ask yourself clear to who? Clear for what? The value of clarity is that others can follow your train of thought, can understand how you came to the conclusion you did. That way they can share the question you're asking, imagine the same world that you are. The last element to keep in mind here is that when we talk about thinking and reasoning, often those things happen not just with other people but in front of other people. So when we make a mistake in our reasoning or treat someone poorly in a heated conversation, not only does it affect us, it can affect the people around us and how they think. The most extreme example of this is when two television commentators battle it out on the evening news or maybe when two cultural critics have a debate on Twitter. Everyone watching or reading that debate is gathering information or reasons to improve or update their own views. This is all philosophers call the dialectical situation. That when you're doing your thinking and you're talking with others, you're doing it in a broader social context. In other words, you don't encounter ideas or thoughts in a vacuum. You encounter them as a member of society. So being a great tinker isn't just making logical errors, it's also things like making sure everyone's voice is heard and considering how your audience, if you have one, will be affected by what you say. So with that in mind, let's really get started.