Thinking to Some Purpose

Susan Stebbing

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000597479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

"I am convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance. Our failures in thinking are in part due to faults which we could to some extent overcome were we to see clearly how these faults arise. It is the aim of this book to make a small effort in this direction." - Susan Stebbing, from the Preface

Despite huge advances in education, knowledge and communication, it can often seem we are neither well-trained nor well practised in the art of clear thinking. Our powers of reasoning and argument are less confident that they should be, we frequently ignore evidence and we are all too often swayed by rhetoric rather than reason. But what can you do to think and argue better?

First published in 1939 but unavailable for many years, Susan Stebbing's Thinking to Some Purpose is a classic first-aid manual of how to think clearly, and remains astonishingly fresh and insightful. Written against a background of the rise of dictatorships and the collapse of democracy in Europe, it is packed with useful tips and insights. Stebbing offers shrewd advice on how to think critically and clearly, how to spot illogical statements and slipshod thinking, and how to rely on reason rather than emotion. At a time when we are again faced with serious threats to democracy and freedom of thought, Stebbing's advice remains as urgent and important as ever.

This Routledge edition of Thinking to Some Purpose includes a new Foreword by Nigel Warburton and a helpful Introduction by Peter West, who places Susan Stebbing's classic book in historical and philosophical context.

1 Prologue Are the English Illogical?

DOI: 10.4324/b22927-1

There is a belief prevalent among foreigners that we English are illogical. This belief is not confined to foreigners. Our own statesmen, especially since the Great War, have been proud to proclaim that ‘we shall muddle through’, being apparently just as anxious that we should muddle as they are confident that we shall somehow come through. Of this professed pride in our inability to be logical I shall select, at the outset, two examples made to very different assemblies. The first is taken from a speech made by Lord Selborne at the annual festival of the Community of the Resurrection, in 1924. The Church Times (June 20th) reports:

Lord Selborne... referring to the missionary work in South Africa, made some apt remarks about ‘the glorious incapacity for clear thought which is one of the distinguishing marks of our race. It is the cause of our greatest difficulties and has been the secret of some of our greatest successes. If you say sufficiently often and loudly and clearly that the moment the black man comes in contact with the white man his education has begun, your scoffer at mission work may at last understand.’

One wonders whether the Church Times reporter judged the remarks to be ‘apt’ because this ‘glorious incapacity’ was the cause of our greatest difficulties or because it is a glorious incapacity, or because it was the secret of some of our greatest successes. An open secret at least. Or is it, perhaps, not true that the muddling was a cause of these successes? Is it not odd that an incapacity for clear thought should be deemed glorious? Further, it is difficult to believe that saying something ‘often and loudly and clearly’ should end in producing understanding, since, presumably, ‘clearly’ was used by Lord Selborne to refer to the tone of voice.

The second example is taken from a speech by Mr (as he then was) Austen Chamberlain, speaking in the House of Commons, on March 24th, 1925. He criticized the proposals of the Geneva Protocol, and, replying to Mr Arthur Henderson, said:

I am really not sure what the right hon. gentleman himself thinks of it [the Protocol]. At one moment he declares that we undertake no new obligation, and at another moment that it is merely the logical conclusion of the covenant. I profoundly distrust logic when applied to politics, and all English history justifies me. [Ministerial cheers.] Why is it that, as contrasted with other nations, ours has been a peaceful and not a violent development? Why is it that, great as have been the changes that have taken place in this country, we have had none of those sudden revolutions and reactions for the last three hundred years that have so frequently affected more logically-minded nations than ourselves? It is because instinct and experience alike teach us that human nature is not logical, that it is unwise to treat political institutions as instruments of logic, and that it is in wisely refraining from pressing conclusions to their logical end the path of peaceful development and true reform is really found.

(The Times, March 25th, 1925.)

We shall shortly have to consider this unfounded fear of ‘pressing conclusions to their logical end’. It must be admitted that Austen Chamberlain showed himself to be thinking very unclearly with regard to what a logical conclusion is.

‘Democracy is government by discussion, by talk.’ Such was the considered opinion of the Lord Rector of the University of Edinburgh in 1925, as stated in his inaugural address to the students. If this dictum be true, must we suppose that a democratic nation will be expected to flourish if it be governed by discussion revealing a glorious incapacity for clear thought? Will the policy the nation adopts be wise if ‘the talk’ eschews consideration of what is logically relevant to the conclusion to be established? Apparently the Lord Rector was of this opinion, since he was none other than Mr (as he then was) Stanley Baldwin. Lord Baldwin is commonly regarded as a typical Englishman, impatient of logic, a little stupid it may be, but indubitably honest, not wasting time upon fine-spun arguments, but guided by common sense and experience. So, too, I fancy he likes to regard himself. Or is it only that he likes others thus to regard him?¹ The address he gave as Lord Rector is extraordinarily interesting. It is entitled ‘Truth and Politics’.² In what he then said he showed himself to be sensitively aware of the difficulties of a political leader who has to persuade an electorate to support a policy but dare not assume that the electors are capable of being rationally convinced.

‘The advocate and the politician’, said Baldwin,

are more interested in persuasion than in proof. They have a client or a policy to defend. The political audience is not dishonest in itself, nor does it desire to approve dishonesty or misrepresentation in others, but it is an audience only imperfectly prepared to follow a close argument, and the speaker wishes to make a favourable impression, to secure support for a policy (p. 96).

I am writing this book partly because I am in considerable agreement with this statement. I am hopeful that the British electorate neither desires to think dishonestly nor to approve dishonesty in political speeches. I agree, again, with Lord Baldwin that most electors are ‘only imperfectly prepared to follow a close argument’. That being so, the politician who seeks to win an election must resort to persuasion. He ‘must’ because, first, he seeks to get something done – to put a policy into effect; secondly, in order to achieve this policy, his party must be returned to power; thirdly, the victory of the party at the polls depends upon the votes of electors who are beset by hopes and fears and who have never been trained to think clearly. Consequently, rhetorical persuasion will in fact be substituted for rational argument and for reasonable consideration of the difficulties that confront any democratic government. This grim practical necessity is, however, no matter for congratulation. If the maintenance of democratic institutions is worth while, then the citizens of a democratic country must record their votes only after due deliberation. But ‘due deliberation’ involves instruction with regard to the facts, ability to assess the evidence provided by such instruction and, further, the ability to discount, as far as may be, the effects of prejudice and to evade the distortion produced by unwarrantable fears and by unrealizable hopes. In other words, the citizens must be able to think relevantly, that is, to think to some purpose. Thus to think is difficult. Accordingly, it is not surprising, however saddening it may be, that many of our statesmen do not trust the citizens to think, but rely instead upon the arts of persuasion.

To think logically is to think relevantly to the purpose that initiated the thinking; all effective thinking is directed to an end. To neglect relevant considerations would entail failure to achieve that end. There is prevalent a strange misconception with regard to the nature of logic – a misconception that seems to be deeply rooted in the beliefs of Lord Baldwin and the late Sir Austen Chamberlain, to mention only two of our prominent statesmen. On many occasions Lord Baldwin had warned his hearers against the dangers of logic. In his rectorial address, speaking to university students, he said wisely:

Ability to read is not synonymous with ability to reflect on what is read. Better to doubt methodically than to think capriciously. Education that has merely taught people to follow a syllogism without enabling them to detect a fallacy has left them in constant peril. And as with the fallacy so with its near relation, the half truth. For though it has been accepted through the ages that half a loaf is better than no bread, half a truth is not only not better than no truth, it is worse than many lies, and the slave of lies and half truths is ignorance (pp. 90–91).

On another occasion, speaking at Philip Stott College, on ‘Political Education’, he insisted that the purpose of such education

is always twofold; it is, in the first place, to clear the mind of cant, and in the second place, not to rest content with having learnt enough to follow the syllogism, knowing perfectly well that to follow the syllogism alone is a short cut to the bottomless pit, unless you are able to detect the fallacies that lie by the wayside (p. 153).

Surely it is odd to suppose that we can have ‘learnt enough to follow the syllogism’ without having learnt also ‘to detect the fallacies that lie by the wayside’. Certainly professional logicians often think illogically and act unreasonably; they too are human beings subject to all the obstacles that beset men who have to think in order that they may achieve their aims. But a knowledge of what these hindrances are and of the difference between thinking logically and thinking illogically may at least serve to put us on our guard. Some of these hindrances will be discussed in the following chapters. Here I wish to emphasize two considerations: first, that a knowledge of the conditions of a logically sound argument does help us to think clearly provided that we wish so to think; secondly, that not all sound arguments are syllogistic. What Lord Baldwin is thinking of when he speaks of ‘the syllogism alone’ as ‘a short cut to the bottomless pit’, I do not profess to know. Perhaps both phrases are mere rhetorical devices. Yet he is very sincere in his detestation of logic. This detestation is so relevant to the purpose of this book that I propose to quote at some length from Baldwin’s last public speech as Prime Minister, just before he was elevated to the peerage. The occasion was a dinner given by the combined Empire Societies at Grosvenor House, on Empire Day, 1937. The audience was mainly composed of statesmen from the Dominions, the Colonies and India; the speech was to propose the toast of ‘The British Commonwealth’. The passage quoted below was reported in The Times with the sub-heading

CONSTITUTION AND LOGIC WARNING AGAINST A STRAIT WAISTCOAT³

Baldwin was not, of course, responsible for this sub-heading but, in my opinion, the Times reporter had accurately assessed the emphasis laid upon these contentions by the speaker:

Now I would like, as but an indifferent historical student, to make an observation about our Constitution... One of the most interesting features about it historically is that the Constitution was not evolved by logicians. The British Constitution has grown to what it is through the work of men like you and me – just ordinary people who have adapted the government of the country in order to meet the environment of the age in which they lived, and they have always preserved sufficient flexibility to enable that adaptation to be accomplished.

Now that is extremely important, because it seems to me that one of the reasons why our people are alive and flourishing, and have avoided many of the troubles that have fallen to less happy nations, is because we have never been guided by logic in anything we have done.⁴

If you will only do what I have done – study the history of the growth of the Constitution from the time of the Civil War until the Hanoverians came to the Throne – you will see what a country can do without the aid of logic, but with the aid of common sense. Therefore, my next point is: Do not let us put any part of our Constitution in a strait waistcoat, because strangulation is the ultimate fate.

And I would say one more thing – don’t let us be too keen on definition. I should like to remind you, if I can remind an audience so educated as this, that it was that attempt to define that split the Christian Church into fragments soon after it came into existence, and it has never recovered from that, and therefore I deduce – and I hope that it is a logical thing – that if we try to define the Constitution too much we may split the Empire into fragments, and it will never come together again. Politically, if ever a saying was true, it is this: ‘The letter killeth, and the spirit giveth life’.

A consideration of these statements will, I think, reveal that Baldwin mistrusts logic because he misconceives its nature. We may dismiss rather hastily the statement that the British Constitution was not evolved by logicians. Probably no one has ever supposed that it was. No doubt Baldwin intended merely to make the point that the British Constitution ‘has grown’; in other words, it is of the flexible, not of the rigid, type of Constitutions. There is no single enactment wherein its precise form is laid down. It is true (that is to say, I agree with the statement) that a flexible Constitution suits the English temperament. This may be in part the reason why parliamentary institutions originated in this country, for such institutions could hardly have been thought out in principle, de novo, and then embodied in a single written form. The important question to ask is whether there is anything specifically illogical in such a development? It is hard to see why anyone should regard growth and development as illogical. It is to be hoped that if a Constitution were to be developed by logicians, then they would take note of the relevant facts. Among these relevant facts would be the characteristics of the people who have to work by, and live within, the conditions laid down by the Constitution. Baldwin’s warning not ‘to be too keen on definition’ suggests wherein lies his mistake. He supposes that a logician must demand a definition, and that the definition must necessarily set forth precisely determinable characteristics. But whosoever demands such a definition of that which lacks precisely determinable characteristics is being illogical. The mistake consists in demanding that a sharp line should be drawn concerning characteristics which are not in fact sharply distinguishable. Later in this book I shall consider this illegitimate demand.⁵ To fail to realize that such a demand is illegitimate involves a logical error. Many people besides Baldwin erroneously suppose that it is impossible to think logically about anything that is not clear-cut. If that were so, then very few of the matters that concern us as practical men could be thought about in a rational manner. We do not live in a world that has the neatness of a card-index. It is not logical to ignore so relevant a fact; it is logical to recognize it. Baldwin apparently supposes the contrary. He seems to attribute to common sense what may well be attributed to logic, even though he does not disdain to hope that his deduction (on occasions) is logical.

I suspect that he confuses logical thinking with attempting to derive knowledge about what happens in the world by purely a priori speculation. Such an attempt is, however, thoroughly illogical; it is anti-scientific. Yet this confusion is strikingly illustrated both by the claim of a French statesman that the French are logical and by the pride of an English statesman in his distrust of logic. An examination of their statements may, perhaps, help to remove these prevalent misconceptions of the nature of logical thinking.

The reader may remember that the Protocol of 1924 led to a certain amount of tension between the English and the French. At the Assembly of the League of Nations in September 1925 an attempt was made to arrive at a clearer understanding of the situation. M. Painlevé and Mr Austen Chamberlain suggested that their misunderstandings were in part due to differences of mental outlook. M. Painlevé said:

The Protocol’s universality, the severe and unbending logic of its obligations, were framed to please the Latin mentality, which delights in starting from abstract principles and passing from generalities to details. The Anglo-Saxon mentality, on the other hand, prefers to proceed from individual concrete cases to generalizations.⁶

Mr Austen Chamberlain replied as follows:

We are prone to eschew the general, we are fearful of these logical conclusions pushed to the extreme, because, in fact, human nature being what it is, logic plays but a small part in our everyday life. We are actuated by tradition, by affection, by prejudice, by moments of emotion and sentiment. In the face of any great problem we are seldom really guided by the stern logic of the philosopher or the historian who, removed from all the turmoil of daily life, works in the studious calm of his surroundings.⁷

I do not doubt that these spokesmen correctly represented the different mental habits of their respective nations. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword by Nigel Warburton
• Introduction by Peter West
• Preface to the 1939 Edition
• 1 Prologue: Are the English Illogical?
• 2 Thinking and Doing
• 3 A Mind in Blinkers
• 4 You and I: I and You
• 5 Bad Language and Twisted Thinking
• 6 Potted Thinking
• 7 Propaganda: An Obstacle
• 8 Difficulties of an Audience
• 9 Illustration and Analogy
• 10 The Unpopularity of Being Moderate
• 11 On Being Misled by Half, and Other Fractions
• 12 Slipping Away from the Point
• 13 Taking Advantage of Our Stupidity
• 14 Testing Our Beliefs
• 15 Epilogue: Democracy and Freedom of Mind
• Index