How to Think Well

To live the best possible life, we must think critically about what is true. But finding truth is difficult for a number of reasons. First, it is easy to be fooled by others. We can be fooled by people who claim to be authorities but are not. We can also be fooled by people who have fine sounding arguments, but their logic is flawed, and often hard to detect. We can also be fooled by something that looks right, but after careful examination turns out to be false. I am thinking that my desk appears to be a solid object, but in fact it is made up of very small particles called atoms, which are constantly in motion. Looks are often deceptive. We can also be fooled because when we want something to be true, we are all good at finding evidence to support that truth, even when it isn’t true.

For these reasons, and many others, finding truth is difficult. Therefore, people who really want to know what is true are curious and are willing to explore. As a philosopher I want to get better at thinking and evaluating the truth. One of the ways I do this in my life is by reading books that help me think better about the world, God, and the good life.

Last night I finished reading Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World by David Grimes, and as much as I appreciated many of his points, it struck me that he overlooked a very important dimension of thinking well. Grimes is a physicist and cancer researcher. He describes some annoying features of our mind which can keep us from good thinking. For example, he often references the confirmation bias which has led everyone astray at one time or another. He also had a great chapter on how valuable statistics and probability are to good thinking.  He also explained how statistics and probability can be manipulated and misunderstood with disastrous results. To illustrate the dire consequences of misunderstanding probability, he told the story of Sally Clark. Sally was a young woman who was sent to prison for three hellish years for a crime she didn’t commit- all because the Jury did not correctly understand statistics and probability. Sally never recovered from her time in prison and died a few years after her release. In addition to pointing out annoying features of the mind, and our inability to understand and think logically, Grimes did a great job of articulating how the media, and especially social media, can keep us from thinking well.

Grimes also gave very insightful ideas on how we can improve our thinking. He suggested that we should be skeptical about solutions which reduce complex problems to simple answers. He provided some good strategies for sorting through the vast amount of information available to find the truth which is often buried under trivia and misleading headlines. And in every chapter, he emphasized how important it is to think logically and recognize common logical fallacies.

Throughout the book, however, Grimes assumes that the only reality that exists is the material. He assumes if it can’t be measured, it doesn’t exist. I have no doubt that critical thinking is central to living a good and meaningful life.  I am also thankful for all the scientists who have carefully examined and measured the material world. I would never want to live in a time before the Enlightenment. But as I read, I kept thinking about things which are real, but which are not material, and can’t be measured.

For example, in chapter 19 Grimes contrasts the work of Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein. He concludes that Einstein was the real scientist because the theory of relativity was proven, whereas Freud’s speculation that dreams were wish-fulfillment was merely unhelpful speculation. He ignores Freud’s work on the impact of early childhood experiences and on the subconscious, both of which have come to be a central part of our understanding of who people are and how they behave.

Grimes also writes a great deal about the error of what he calls “cherry picking;” that is, selecting only a few facts which bolster your position and ignoring the ones that contradict it. It seems to me that he does a good deal of “cherry picking” himself with religion. He writes about the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but he never mentions the work of serious, thoughtful theologians.  And it isn’t just the church-he neglects all serious work that is being done in psychology today. Although he would never say it, you get the impression he doesn’t think psychology is a real science.

I have learned a great deal from, and appreciate the work done by psychologists, journalists, and researchers like Brené Brown, Jonathan Haidt, David Brooks, and Jordan Peterson. Yet all these authors, and thousands of others, study and write about important things which cannot be studied by the scientific method. And of course there are thoughtful Christian writers like John Stott, C.S. Lewis, Charles Colson, and Timothy Keller, to name just a few, who have contributed a great deal to our understanding of the reality of Christianity.

Of course, theology and psychology will never have the mathematical certainty that can be found in physics and chemistry. But who would deny that love, hate, and depression are real and deserved to be carefully studied and understood?

Grimes makes a critical and common mistake that is often made in scientific circles, namely, if you can’t measure it, it isn’t real. But to make that assumption is to assume that the things which are most important to us don’t exist.

I want to think well. I don’t want to be fooled by my own confirmation bias or make logical mistakes in my thinking which cause me to make errors in judgment. I am glad that I read Good Thinking, and I am sure it will help me to think better about what is true. But I will never assume that just because a subject doesn’t yield perfectly to the scientific method it doesn’t exist or isn’t worthy of study.