The Philosopher's Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room

By: Patrick Grim, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Patrick Grim

Length: 12 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

Thinking is at the heart of our everyday lives, yet our thinking can go wrong in any number of ways. Bad arguments, fallacious reasoning, misleading language, and built-in cognitive biases are all traps that keep us from rational decision making. What can we do to avoid these traps and think better? Is it possible to think faster, more efficiently, and more systematically?

The Philosopher’s Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room, taught by award-winning Professor Patrick Grim of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, arms you against the perils of bad thinking and supplies you with an arsenal of strategies to help you be more creative, logical, inventive, realistic, and rational in all aspects of your daily life.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2013 The Great Courses (P)2013 The Teaching Company, LLC

Good content, but it needs video for full benefit.

Good course, but it references a lot of charts which impairs the audio-only version. I recommend you get the video version of the course directly from The Great Courses when it is on sale.

Great refresher in philosophical basics

Didn’t like that I couldn’t see some of the visuals the author was using to illustrate a couple points. Otherwise I thought it was easy to follow and practical for everyday conversation and relational problem solving.

Deep thought

A very good overview of how logic should be used to make since of our lives less stressful.

Didn't get good until chapter 9

If you need a basic introduction to logic, the first 8 chapters will be useful. Otherwise skip to the latter chapters (chapter 9 and later) which really shine.

Instant favorite

I loved this lecture series. Admittedly, the title is snobbish and completely misses the point - so I was pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the series itself. The content and performance are presented clearly and in depth, the familiar concepts are built upon and ultimately provide a solid foundation for understanding rational argument.

It would be nice if this were required reading.. I hope you (review reader) take the leap and benefit from all this audio book can offer.

must read and listen

plenty of insight on thought pattern and conforming to thoughts. we as a culture need to leave more time for thoughts than rushing to an answer

The best

One of the best Audios I listened in Audible, I listened to it twice.
The speaker really expanded his material beautifuly and presented it in a really smooth way.
Besides the content really broad my mind.

Quirky and Interesting

This is a book about thinking. It's really quite remarkable. Grim uses a number of thought problems to help the reader understand different ways in which we think, organize, and analyze the world around us. He also shows the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches. It's really quite a quirky and interesting text.

Pleasantries Thought Provoking

This is a nice overview of thinking logically. It inspired several ideas for further study.
Being audio only, I had to imagine the illustrations used by Dr. Grim as he explained some concepts.
Well worth the price I paid.

Lots of techniques for seeing things a different way

I went into this course thinking it would go a particular way: intros to many of the great philosophers and a bit about their theories and techniques. Its NOT about that at all.

Instead, it uses examples and ideas from many great thinkers (not just philosophers) to show you how to apply those ideas to different situations we encounter in life. It’s super interesting and informative, plus the lecturer is fun to listen to.

Caveat: this course does use visual examples in some cases, but most examples are perfectly fine for just audio.