Susan Stebbing  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Redirected from L. Susan Stebbing)
Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Lizzie Susan Stebbing (2 December 1885 – 11 September 1943) was a British philosopher. She belonged to the 1930s generation of analytic philosophy, and was a founder in 1933 of the journal Analysis.

Thinking to some purpose

Stebbing's most popular work is Thinking to some purpose (1939) which was described on the cover of the first Pelican Books edition as being:
"A manual of first-aid to clear thinking, showing how to detect illogicalities in other people's mental processes and how to avoid them in our own".
The work arose out of a synopsis she wrote for a series of radio broadcasts intended for the BBC. Published on the eve of the Second World War, Stebbing wrote:
"There is an urgent need to-day for the citizens of a democracy to think well. It is not enough to have freedom of the Press and parliamentary institutions. Our difficulties are due partly to our own stupidity, partly to the exploitation of that stupidity, and partly to our own prejudices and personal desires."
Some of our ineffective thinking arises from a proper desire to have a confident opinion about complicated issues. Unfortunately, "few true statements about a complicated state of affairs can be expressed in a single sentence. … We easily fall into the habit of accepting compressed statements which save us from the trouble of thinking. Thus arises what I shall call Potted Thinking:
"This metaphor seems to me to be appropriate, because potted thinking is easily accepted, is concentrated in form, and has lost the vitamins essential to mental nourishment. You will notice that I have continued the metaphor by using the word ‘vitamins.’ Do not accept the metaphor too hastily: it must be expanded. Potted meat is sometimes a convenient form of food; it may be tasty, it contains some nourishment. But its nutritive value is not equivalent to that of the fresh meat from which it was potted. Also, it must have originally been made from fresh meat, and must not be allowed to grow stale. Similarly a potted belief is convenient; it can be stated briefly, sometimes also in a snappy manner likely to attract attention. A potted belief should be the outcome of a belief that is not potted. It should not be held on to when circumstances have changed and new factors have come to light. We should not allow our habits of thought to close our minds, nor rely upon catch-words to save ourselves from the labour of thinking. Vitamins are essential for the natural growth of our bodies; the critical questioning at times of our potted beliefs is necessary for the development of our capacity to think to some purpose."

Works

  • Pragmatism and French Voluntarism (1914)
  • A Modern Introduction to Logic (1930)
  • Logical Positivism and Analysis (1933)
  • Logic in Practice (1934)
  • Imagination and Thinking (1936) with C. Day-Lewis
  • Philosophy and the Physicists (1937)
  • Thinking to Some Purpose (1939)
  • Ideals and Illusions (1941)
  • A Modern Elementary Logic (1943)





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Susan Stebbing" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools