Work · Analytic Philosophy
Thinking to Some Purpose
Pelican book that grew out of a series of talks the BBC had commissioned from her, which illness prevented her from giving: it analyses arguments in political speeches and newspapers – among them “potted thinking”, convictions taken over in compressed form without being thought through – in the conviction that a democracy needs citizens who think clearly.
Introduction
“Thinking to Some Purpose” appeared in 1939 as a Pelican paperback for a mass readership; it grew out of a synopsis Stebbing had prepared for talks on BBC radio, and its subtitle called it “a manual of first-aid to clear thinking”. Writing in the years of appeasement and on the eve of war, Stebbing took her examples from the speeches of politicians, from newspapers and from everyday controversy, and showed how arguments go wrong – through emotionally loaded words, ambiguity, hasty generalisation and attacks on persons instead of claims. She coined the phrase “potted thinking” for convictions taken over in compressed, ready-made form without being thought through. Her aim was not to teach a technique for winning debates but to defend a condition of democracy: citizens must be able to judge for themselves what they are told. The book was reprinted many times; Max Black took an excerpt from it into his textbook “Critical Thinking” (1946).
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