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

By: Patrick Grim, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Patrick Grim

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.

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.

Not a good fit for audio consumption

I love the concept but it only took me two lectures to figure out that I would appreciate this course much more on video.

I t was a great course

I think the choice of materials of this course snd I believe they were very helpful for people like me who are on a beginner level of the subject matter of the course. I am always intrigued by philosophy and this course was one of the best ways to learn about it in a more professional and academic way. The tools presented in this course are essential to our day-to-day lives.

One of the best courses

I have an armchair philosophy background thanks to my liberal arts education. I have been wanting to brush up on it for a couple years.

This lecture series was AWESOME. Professor Grim actually behaves like a classical philosopher and weaves in many disciplines to help you learn how to be the most rational person in the room.

This course is useful to everyone, but will most benefit businesspeople and entrepreneurs as it helps you make rational choices off of visual data.

I was so sad for this course to end - Professor Grim did an EXCELLENT job.

World's greatest thinkers

An engaging survey of some of history's most brilliant thinkers. The professor explained complex subjects well.

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.