Introduction
“Thinking … is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” – Rudolph Steiner. 07
What is thinking? It may seem strange to begin a logic textbook with this question. ‘Thinking’ is perhaps the most intimate and personal thing that people do. Yet the more you ‘think’ about thinking, the more mysterious it can appear. It is the sort of thing that one intuitively or naturally understands, and yet cannot describe to others without great difficulty. Many people believe that logic is very abstract, dispassionate, complicated, and even cold. But in fact the study of logic is nothing more intimidating or obscure than this: the study of good thinking. Before asking what good thinking is, we might want to ask a few questions about thinking as such. Let’s say that thinking is the activity of the mind. It includes activities like reasoning, perceiving, explaining, inventing, problem solving, learning, teaching, contemplating, knowing, and even dreaming. We think about everything, all the time. We think about ordinary practical matters like what to have for dinner tonight, all the way to the most abstract and serious matters, like the meaning of life. You are thinking, right now, as you read this sentence. Some may wish to draw a distinction between thinking and feeling, including sense perception, emotional experience, or even religious faith. Some might want to argue that computers or animals are capable of thinking, even if their way of thinking is somehow different from that of humans. And some might say that the question is an absurd one: everyone knows what thinking is, because everyone ‘thinks’ all the time, and everyone can ‘feel’ themselves thinking. We are somehow ‘aware’ of thoughts in our minds, aware of
information and knowledge, aware of memories, and aware of likely future probabilities and so on. Thinking is a first-order phenomenological insight: it’s a bit like knowing what the colour ‘red’ looks like, or knowing the taste of an orange. You know what it is, but you probably have an awfully hard time describing or defining it. Thinking, in this way of ‘thinking’ about thinking, is an event. It is something done, something that takes place, and something that happens. There are a lot of serious philosophical (as well as scientific) questions about the nature of thinking. For instance, we might ask: ‘who is it that knows that he or she knows?’ Who is it that is aware of thinking? And is not that awareness of thinking itself a kind of thinking? This is a line of questioning that may seem as if it can go on forever. It’s a little bit beyond the purpose of this book to investigate all of them. But if you happen to find yourself asking how do you know that you know something, or if you find yourself thinking about the nature of thinking itself, you may be well on your way toward becoming an excellent philosopher! Why is good thinking important? A lot of people think of philosophy as something rather vague, wishy-washy, or simplistic. You’ll hear people quote a line from a popular song or movie, and then they’ll say, “That’s my philosophy.” But there’s a lot more to it than that; and a person who merely repeats a popular saying and calls it philosophy has not been doing enough work. Philosophical questions are often