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 Introductory Course

A good introductory course to the topics presented. It was more of a review of many of the topics for me personally but I did learn and get insights into a few additional areas like game theory. Several of the chapters do have sections where it is apparent you are supposed to be looking at some text or diagrams which isn't great for an audible book but not enough to be detracting.

Great content but hard to follow by listening

This is a terrific class but it makes frequent reference to visuals in the accompanying pdf. That means it’s not great for driving, walking, etc. I hope to listen to it again in a setting where I can view the materials.

Sticking with it is worth it!

Some might find the beginning chapters a little too academic, but it helps to have a pencil and paper to draw the pictures. Then things get much easier and interesting. I really like that you are given a situation and question and then encouraged to press pause and think before you move on.

Well written and plainly spoken

I’m sure I’ll revisit this in the near future... with a pen and paper in hand to take better notes. A lot of information packed in this course.

great professor

I am familiar with professor Grim's other courses and this one is very informative and useful, even if certain segments will function as review

Great ideas to think about

The tool kit is helpful and gives many examples. Being able to see and work on exercises that clarify methods and mistakes that can be made.

Rationality

The book systematically maps out with practical examples of how to achieve rationality.

Must read.

A great course

this was a great course spanning the gamut of thinkers and topics and ways to approach problems in philosophy. I highly recommend it. the speaker is articulate and engaging. he includes many thought experiments, manipulative experiments, and stories.

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.