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Recommendations for learning how to think and reason
So, I had this chat with a friend about verious topics. It made me realize how much I love engaging in discussions, but I also noticed that I struggle to articulate my thoughts logically and effectively frame my arguments. I want to improve my reasoning and argument skills so that I can confidently present my ideas in such conversations. So I'm seeking a book recommendation that can help me develop my logical thinking and persuasive abilities. I'm looking for a book that explains things in a straightforward way, with fun examples to practice with, covering diverse topics to make logical thinking enjoyable. If you have any suggestions, I'd be super grateful
If you're trying to become a more effective orator, I think looking for a book is barking up the wrong tree. Check out the speech giving organisation Toastmasters.
Completely anecdotal, but I've noticed that there's not usually much of a correlation between people who are good at written logic/argument and people who are persuasive in person. The skills are sort of related, but they're very different, and to get good at the one you need to practice the one, not the other.
Thanks for your suggestion as you said these two are different skills so I am more interested in written logic
One book which sprang to mind is Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. It is from the perspective of the sciences, but the book is mostly devoted to how to spot unreasonable arguments and construct good ones and engage in rational thinking. This might be up your alley. It's a lovely book too as I find Sagan an engrossing writer.
The inverted structure sounds a lot like the standard five-paragraph essay taught in the US school system. Intro/thesis, three key supports, conclusion reiterating thesis and tying everything together
I can very much relate to this. I grew up listening to the type of long-winded stories you mentioned. They go on for tens of minutes at a time circling around some nebulous thing called ‘the point’. Unfortunately, grad school changed me in terribly deep ways and I just can’t anymore. What I’d really like to figure out is how to develop the skills to listen patiently again while perched on the event horizon waiting for the other shoe to finally drop.
I'll preface this by noting that rhetoric, and specifically written argumentation, was my focus in university.
I hope you don't take offense, but that frankly sounds like terrible advice. The pyramid structure you're suggesting is awful to read, and does a poor job of convincing people in the mode that people actually think. There's a reason educators reject the classic five paragraph structure in argumentation after primary education, or before that, if they're worth their salt. It's an unnecessarily rigid paradigm that just doesn't fit effective arguments well, and often pressures the rhetor into horribly reductionist arguments.
The ancient Greeks you're referring to didn't follow this structure either, with one important exception (and even he didn't actually employ it often, though he did sort of advocate it). Aristotle wrote extensively on rhetoric, and a lot of it is very useful: the tripartite rhetorical scheme of ethos, pathos, and logos is invaluable in evaluating arguments, for instance.
He was also a compulsive systematizer who couldn't help himself from laying down his own aesthetic tastes as immutable law. His evaluation of drama and prescription of dramatic rules for composition are especially noteworthy in this regard, and were held dogmatically all the way up to the Renaissance and beyond. Most of them read to us as utter nonsense, such as his insistence that all drama should unfold in real-time, and should all take place in one location. It's his belief that having jumps in setting or time simply confuses audiences; nowadays we call TV episodes that follow his dramatic unities "bottle episodes," and will scoff if a series follows them more than once a season, if that.
Plato has his Socrates follow an altogether different rhetorical structure in his dialogues, familiar to us as the Socratic Method. This structure works for persuasion much better than any artificial framework like that damned five-paragraph pyramid, because it emulates the process by which people best learn things. The process of proposing hypotheses, questioning logical consequents, examining inductive and empirical evidence, and seeing how well the conclusion aligns with our understanding of ethics and morality is more or less the process of the Scientific Method (though, perhaps with an added ethical component). That makes sense, because ultimately argumentation is or should be a shortcut for sound learning: the non-existent ideal argumentative thesis is one that anyone should arrive at by themselves, given enough evidence and questioning (that's axiomatic in Western rhetoric, at least). Our understanding of objectivity and subjectivity throw a wrench in this formulation, but that's what we strive for.
The pyramid or five-graf structure fails miserably at this. It's not responsive to the objections and questions that will inevitably arise in the auditor's mind. It does not allow for the evolution in understanding that comes from raising an hypothesis, testing it with logic and evidence, then modifying or rejecting it–and it's this process that gives us mastery over a piece of knowledge rather than just cataloging it and filling it away.
Maybe if argumentation were merely a tool to convince a CEO with ADHD and a soupçon of sociopathy to go along with your proposal, the Pyramid is a fantastic heuristic. I wouldn't know, as that's not an experience I can claim. For almost anything else, I'd advise that you avoid anything business consultants recommend.
Certainly!
You're familiar with Plato's depiction of Socrates. The character (for literary character he most certainly is) presents himself as the king of JAQing off. He's just prodding people with questions, because the unexamined life is unmanly etc. But really, Plato has a conclusion in mind to which he's trying to guide his audience.
The way he does that is by having Socrates interrogate his interlocutors as to what exactly they mean by terms, what they believe things like "good" or "virtue" to be, how they can reconcile logical paradoxes he presents them by his questions. In short, he's leading them down a logical garden path to reach the same conclusion he's had in mind all along. On the way he returns to the primary concept at hand and continually reframes the solution with consideration to the points that have been established and the objections his interlocutors have raised. It's a process of logic, ethics and emotion that's being guided by the one making the argument – that is, Plato, not Socrates.
This mirrors the way people learn things. We start by recognizing something about which we require knowledge, we ask questions, take in empirical evidence, we try out logical constructions and modify them as necessary. If we've followed this process in a rigorous way, we can have some confidence in the conclusions we reach. We can say we've mastered the subject.
When your arguments parallel this learning process, the person you're trying to convince will be learning the conclusion you're trying to reach. It's not adversarial, there's no reason for someone to put up defenses. There's less of a challenge to the ego in accepting your conclusions.
The pyramidal five-graf structure is much too rigid to accomplish any of this. It's too artificial to be affecting, and too divorced from the process of discovery to carry your audience along. It's been designed to align with an abstract aesthetic – shout out to my man Aristotle – not to align with the way people come to believe things, to know.
I'm surprised that people don't do this. It's incredibly elementary.
When I think about it, I do recall many conversations with educated people, even in workplaces, who don't do this.
I recall stand-ups where people talk about: "well, this happened and this happened, this service failed, I reached out to X team and Y told me this..." blah blah. I'm zoning out. By the time they finish, it's not immediately clear to me what needs to be done or what the implications are.
Impatient?
If there's any good thing that Jordan Peterson ever did, it's this essay.
Writing essays using his method is a very good way to improve your reasoning skills. Think about a question or topic that you want to explore and write a couple of essays using his methodology.
Other than that, journaling is a good way to practice this skill. A thing I liked to do was to journal about my beliefs, and construct some argument about why I have them.
After all, if you can't argue & convince yourself, you can't do it with someone else.
Reading random books can only take you so far; when looking to improve these specific skills that you mention, you should read books in order to get ideas about what to argue for or against. And in this case, any book of interest to you can serve this purpose.
Edit: the takeaway should be "improving your argumentation skills is a matter of practice, not theory". I'm not encouraging you to stop reading books :)
it's not exactly what you're looking for (it is...uh...not particularly straightforward) but nevertheless you might enjoy Gödel, Escher, Bach
the process of trying to read it will definitely change the way you think about logical thinking...if that makes sense.
Gosh, I'm not sure if GEB is what OP is asking for, but I also love this book to bits and always encourage people to check it out.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius feels, for the most part, surprisingly modern, since the core principles are very universal.
It's nothing groundbreaking, but it helps to calm down and try to reason in a logical way.
I'll focus more on the "reasoning and structuring ones thoughts" aspect of your question, since it looks like that my be more important to you, judging from your replies to other comments.
And I agree with some others here that reasoning and making convincing arguments or becoming a better orator are separate things. They can be combined very well if you can do both, but they don't depend on another.
If you are only looking for a book, I could recommend The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef. To shameless copy the summary of Wikipedia:
If you want more general recommendations, I'd say to look into philosophy a bit, especially its early history in the presocratic time, followed by how Socrates completely shook the world of reason and knowledge. And then the various schools of thought that came after Socrates.
This can give you a solid foundation of why proper reasoning is so important as well as the general framework concerning how proper reasoning should roughly look like.
For all this I'd recommend the podcast Philosophize This!. I very much enjoy it and you don't need any previous knowledge of philosophy if you listen to it in chronological order.
After all, everything we know and the ways we think now are the results of everything that came before us.
Once you have a rough framework for reasoning (or even right away, this also doesn't require previous knowledge) I could recommend you look into Street Epistemology, especially the youtube channel of Anthony Magnabosco, who developed the technique.
Epistemology is the general study of knowledge (how do we know what we know and how can we know it's true) and Street Epistemology tries to make everyone be able to reasonably test the "believes" (as in something that is believed to be true, doesn't have to do with religion spirituality). The kinda "catchphrase" of Street Epistemology is "what do you believe and why?"
All this should help you form methods for yourself to make sure your believes and arguments are actually based on reason and logic.
Don't know how to thank you. Thank you so much for help.
To piggyback on this chain, if you do decide to delve into the Greeks, I strongly suggest you read a distillation of Aristotle's rhetoric. His actual writings in the subject are pretty accessible given a decent translation, but he has a habit of getting into the weeds with systematization, of which he's a compulsive addict.
His work is foundational for millennia of Western rhetoric though, and contains essential concepts. In particular, I've always found his formulation of ethos, pathos, and logos invaluable, and I've yet to see an argument that can't be evaluated on some level through that lens. His contention is that a "good" argument should represent a balance between those three elements, though he at least superficially favors logos, because of course he does. He's Aristotle.
I’m going to quote myself from a long comment I made on an old thread in response to a Scott Alexander piece:
Edit: Here’s a description of this textbook:
Just ordered Thanks a lot for recommendation
Is it more the logical reasoning itself or the articulation of that reasoning to others that you’d like to improve on? Might well be that the answer is you want to focus on both, but I’ve found the two skills to be fairly distinct: one is about structuring your own thoughts, the other is about judging how your audience thinks and packaging the conclusions you already have in a way that’ll mesh with that.
If I had to choose between these two, I would choose structuring my own thought.
You and me both.
I think books are not that helpful. If anything helps, it is practice practice practice.
I started writing a lot. Sometimes I post it on Hacker News or here, I also started a blog recently where I plan to post things. Sometimes people point out flaws I made, sometimes it is sufficient to re-read what I have written after a few weeks and at least some of the flaws really pop out (uh, this sentence can be interpreted in three different ways and here I assumed knowledge that is not that common and my argument does not make sense to people who do not know...).
I miss the times at college - we were discussing or writing all the time and having it dissected by someone really smart and educated helped a lot. IMO the best way to improve is to emulate this - surround yourself with smart and educated people willing to provide feedback.
The problem with practicing in internet discussions or with friends is that people discuss things that are interesting to them, which means they are invested. There is nothing like having your arguments analyzed by a professor who does not want to convince you, who just wants to teach you how to reason. If there is a community where people read each other's drafts and provide feedback of this kind, please tell me - I want to go to there.
And I know this will not make sense to people who have not seen 30 Rock. I can't stop myself from doing that. I just hope it is tolerable with a little inside joke.
I am a strong believer in the ability of books to help teach logic, argumentation, and rational analysis, not sure why others dismiss them in this thread. You said general writing, so here’s a few good books that could help:
“Writing Arguments” by Ramage et al
“They Say, I Say” by Graff & Birkstein
“The Power of Critical Thinking” by Vaughn is more of a textbook, but falls within what you are asking also
People will tell you to read ancient philosophy, and I think that there are things to learn from that, but I do not think it should be your first or only stop. Also, be mindful of what you are reading. While “Ethics” by Spinoza (though admittedly not “ancient”) is great at drawing inferences from axioms, “Meditations” by Aurelius just lists thoughts. Obviously, the former is better if you want to think more critically.
It sounds like you are interested in what literature, philosophy, and law call “argumentation,” so I would start by looking into that term. The term encompasses more than heated arguments, covering both logic and presentation. Without being too specific, I am in this field and would be happy to answer questions.
Hi, thankyou so much for recommendations i ordered all three books from Amazon my question is how to prectice argumentation and if there is more recommendations i would love to know thanks a lot
I don’t know what your situation is, but if you are in school there are often debate clubs, mock trial teams, and/or model UN teams that all could serve as a good place to practice this type of thing. Maybe they have those for adults too, but I haven’t seen them (nor sought them out). Outside of that type of forum, I can’t recommend trying to argue with people in your day-to-day life. You could try reading philosophy or keeping up with court cases. Maybe some type of academic journal on a relevant subject might interest you. I don’t have a lot of experience with them, but essay competitions are out there too, that may be of some interest to you. Getting involved in your local community or local politics may also put you in the middle of local discussions about all sorts of different things. I think about argumentation as more of a tool that can be applied to different situations than a hobby.
Thank you so much Do I have to read these books in a certain order?
I highly recommend You Are Not So Smart, a podcast about critical thinking, cognitive bias, and belief formation. The podcast host also has a book called How Minds Change, which discusses persuasion.
My fave podcast episode is the interview with Megan Phelps-Roper, who explained her beliefs changed and how left the church she grew up in. That was the infamous Westboro Baptist Church-- the conservative Christian sect that does things like rally with homophobic signs.
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/05/05/yanss-205-what-we-can-learn-about-dialogue-persuasion-and-change-from-those-who-have-turned-away-from-extremism/amp/
If the goal is to communicate effectively, it's not enough to just have clear and logical statements. It's also important to understand how to encourage good-faith participation with constructive dialogue.
Most of the comments thus far have focused on the questions of "how to make persuasive arguments" or "how to express ideas clearly". I recognize that those questions have a place, but personally, I find them less interesting than the questions of "how to have good thoughts" and "how to produce a logically sound argument". If my opinions are wrong, I would rather my argument not be persuasive. Maybe this is naive, but I think that if you focus first on getting good ideas and coming by them honestly, it won't be so hard to convince others.
To that end, I suggest two books which have had a big impact on how I think about thinking. First, the psychology book thinking fast and slow by kahneman. It goes into some of the counterintuitive ways people actually do thinking, how people make choices, and the kinds of biases everybody has. The book is starting to show its age, it contains several errors, but I do think it is a generally good book.
Second is the teaching book how to solve it by Polya. This is the best book there is about the actual procedures mathematicians follow when confronted with a problem they don't understand. Polya provides a short, practical list of heuristics which can be used to solve any problem, and writes pages and pages of examples showing how to use each one. While the subject matter is built on Polya's experience as a mathematician and as an educator, the strategies explained in the book are generally applicable to most kinds of problems.
Thank you very much for your suggestions, how to solve it is useful for any other subjects like social science, science, political science, philosophy or it is made only for mathematicians?
While many math students find it helpful, Polya's intended audience was actually math teachers, not mathematicians. The examples he chooses are mostly from mathematics, but the heuristics he introduces are all applicable to other subjects as well.
Maybe the book "On Writing Well," which is about non-fictional writing, which could apply to articulating logic in verbal speech as well.
There's also "How to Win Friends and Influence People," which from what I understand has been around for decades because it works well.
I am planning on reading both of these books, I have them, they're in my backlog. So just a caution that I'm merely suggesting them because I think they might be helpful, not sure if they will be as useful as I hope.
In order to make sure your arguments are sound and logical, look up concepts like "emotional reasoning" and ensure that style is not featured in your discourse. Learn about the various types of "logical fallacies" and "cognitive distortions" and observe how often people use those when having debates or conversations. Overall, books on the subject of critical thinking might be what you want.
There is a free course on edx.org called "Language, Proof and Logic". I strongly recommend that.
https://www.edx.org/learn/ethics/stanford-university-language-proof-and-logic
Thanks for the recommendation!
Maybe it's more oriented to making decisions, but this is an eternal (i.e. I tell myself from time to time I'll have a look) bookmark of mine of a compendium of mental models, which can potentially improve your ability to explain certain phenomena:
https://fs.blog/mental-models/
I personally found Thinking in Systems very useful to structuring my own approach to reasoning through things. It’s by Donella Meadows who also coauthored the Limits to Growth report.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3828902-thinking-in-systems
I would recommend Thank You For Arguing. Perhaps it’s adjacent to logic and reasoning as it is about rhetoric, but it can certainly help make one a better speaker and it definitely helps you learn to identify when someone is relying primarily on rhetoric tricks for persuasion. As persuasion is not just about pure logic but the trifecta of Logos, Pathos, Ethos.