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Free Thinking : The nation

From the UK, philosopher Jonathan Rée

All entries in this category: The art of philosophy

  1. Prejudice, self-interest and self-display

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 30 Sep 06, 11:06 AM

    What is freethinking? It's not so easy to say. But perhaps it's easier to ask the question the other way round: what is the opposite of freethiinking?

    The most plausible answer, I think, is prejudice. which is why there has been so much traffic about prejudice on this blog recently.

    But what is prejudice exactly? In the coming days and weeks I want to try to clarify and define it, and I would appreciate your help: facts and anecdotes about prejudices, your own and other peoples, and also ideas about the different classes they fall into, and the different kinds of threat they pose.

    Here's my starter.

    Continue reading "Prejudice, self-interest and self-display"

  1. A short history of freethinking, part two

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 24 Sep 06, 09:50 PM

    Yes indeed: the ideal of freeing ourselves from prejudice is fraught with problems. (Many thanks, Nadim, for a superb little dialogue about this.) We can never be sure whether we are making progress with it. But that does not mean we should give up trying.

    In the first place, the indispensability of logic. As I said the other day in what I thought a dry and boring, but necessary, post on ‘Logic, or how to think’, we should always try to work out the logical entailments of what we affirm or deny. What is logic after all? It is simply what happens when thinking becomes self-conscious, just as arithmetic is what happens when counting becomes self-conscious.

    If people’s sums don’t add up, we tell them to check them and try harder, and won’t be very impressed if they retort that they are freethinkers, and as far as they’re concerned the world itself is unarithmetical. And we should be just as impatient with our home-grown illogicians, who claim that the world itself is illogical, and even imagine that they are speaking in the noble name of ‘freethinking’ as they do so. The world is complex and full of surprises, no doubt: but that only goes to show that we need to keep checking our logical compass.

    Secondly, the problem of prejudice. When I said we should try to free ourselves from prejudice, I did not mean that we could ever succeed, still less that we could ever know that we have succeeded. But that need not stop us being on our guard against the effects of our own prejudices – excavating our unconscious reasons for thinking as we do, and correcting intellectual distortions due to our own laziness, vanity, and self-regard. That, I suspect, is the best route to the only kind of freethinking worth having. (I plan to come back to the problem of intellectual narcissism in a later post.)

    And two of my intellectual heroes had some fine things to say on this point.

    Continue reading "A short history of freethinking, part two"

  1. Logic, or how to think

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 20 Sep 06, 09:57 AM

    My 大象传媒 controllers want me to put myself about a bit more. They would like me to spend more time cruising the blogosphere trying to pick up new partners. But I’m afraid I’m not ready for that, and I’m not sure I’ll ever want to be. I’m an old-fashioned sort, preferring to wait discreetly for things to turn up, and allowing things to develop slowly, under their own momentum.

    And it seems to me that’s what’s now happening on Freethinkinguk.

    I am keen to offer you a few more titbits about the history of freethinking, as well as further comments on democracy, prejudice, the idiocy of the internet, free speech, and the ways in which religious ideas continue to influence people who imagine they have got beyond them. These themes, and several others too (the history of the future, the politics of resentment) are jostling in my in-tray. And I must admit I'm not sure I’ll be able to fit them all in before the plug is pulled on the Freethinking blogs, which is due to happen in about six weeks. In any case they will all have to wait a little longer, while I attend to some themes that have germinated here on freethinkinguk in the past few days

    There have been some exceptionally interesting comments on my last two posts (‘Humble Opinions’ and ‘A short history of freethinking’), and I want tease out one particular strand in them, which I fear might otherwise gets lost. It's about the nature of logic.

    Continue reading "Logic, or how to think"

  1. The curious history of freethinking

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 14 Sep 06, 11:43 PM

    My minders at the 大象传媒 would like me to make my posts a bit snappier and whackier – a bit more bloglike in short. I shall do my best, but I'm afraid I may not succeed. After all they have also tagged me as ‘philosopher’, which implies taking care to look at everything in the round. And that takes time. If it’s not the way things work in the blogosphere, then something will have to give.

    That is why I have been insisting on the difference between holding an opinion and thinking things through. Comments on this distinction are still coming in (very interesting too), and I shall return to it, as incisively as possible, in a later post.

    But first I need to discharge an old promise by explaining a little of the history ‘freethinking’, and the part Bishop Berkeley played in its downfall. If I’m right, the story points to a paradox in the idea of freethinking – a paradox that has not lost its capacity to trip people up.

    Continue reading "The curious history of freethinking"

  1. One Cheer for Democracy

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 29 Aug 06, 01:02 PM

    ‘What is democracy?’ says jesting Esther – and I think I may have an answer.

    In any case it’s nice to do a cyber-handshake with my fellow freethinker, and I hope I can cheer her up a bit, while leaving some of the commenters on Open Minds and Empty Heads climbing the lamp posts in Logic Lane.

    The idea of democracy is as old as western philosophy, and on the whole very few people have had a good word to say for it. But I think I have a notion of democracy that may recommend itself to Esther Wilson and others.

    I think I can dicriminate four different meanings of the term.

    Continue reading "One Cheer for Democracy"

  1. Open minds and empty heads

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 25 Aug 06, 10:07 AM

    Some people found it hard to take, but when I said that ‘the worst thing that can happen to a person is losing the ability to change their mind’ I really meant it. I know we are expected to admire people who, as we say, ‘stick to their principles’, but what does that really mean? The description may cover all-time heroes like Socrates or Nelson Mandela, but surely it applies equally well to Hitler or Pol Pot? We do not really admire people for sticking up for their principles when those principles strike us as mistaken and odious; instead we despise them for not having the courage to change their minds.

    And what are ‘principles’ anyway?

    Continue reading "Open minds and empty heads"

  1. Philosophy and the art of self-transformation

    • Jonathan Rée
    • 22 Aug 06, 11:00 AM

    Activists in the blogosphere seem to divide into two groups: those hoping to change themselves through the encounter with new ideas, and those looking for opportunities to to ride their old hobby horses at the drop of a hat, without bothering to attend to what other people are saying; and we seem to have our share of both here on Freethinkinguk.

    Continue reading "Philosophy and the art of self-transformation"

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