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How to Think Straight
Practical reasoning and clear thinking are essential for everyone if we are to make sense of the information we receive each day. Being able to quickly know the difference between valid and invalid arguments, the contradictory versus the contrary, vagueness and ambiguity, contradiction and self-contradiction, the truthful and the fallacious, separates clear thinkers from the crowd.How to Think Straight lays the foundation for critical reasoning by showing many ways in which our thinking goes awry. Celebrated philosopher Antony Flew entertainingly instructs on the many and varied faults that occur in argument, the power of reason, how to challenge assertions and find evidence, and how not to be persuaded by half-truths. Flew also examines poor reasoning, and why we should be concerned with finding the truth.Lucid, terse, and sensible, with study questions and exercises to help along the way, this enlightening second edition will help you develop the skills necessary to argue and reason effectively by following a few simple, easy-to-remember directions.
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
23 people are currently reading
546 people want to read
About the author
Antony Flew
94 books122 followersAntony Garrard Newton Flew (11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion.
Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticised the idea of life after death, the free will defence to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism, more specifically a belief in the Aristotelian God, stating that in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believes in the existence of God.
He later wrote the book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. This book (and Flew's conversion itself) has been the subject of controversy, following an article in the New York Times magazine alleging that Flew had mentally declined, and that Varghese was the primary author. The matter remains contentious, with some commentators including PZ Myers and Richard Carrier supporting the allegations, and others, including Flew himself, opposing them.
Flew was a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticised the idea of life after death, the free will defence to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism, more specifically a belief in the Aristotelian God, stating that in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believes in the existence of God.
He later wrote the book There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. This book (and Flew's conversion itself) has been the subject of controversy, following an article in the New York Times magazine alleging that Flew had mentally declined, and that Varghese was the primary author. The matter remains contentious, with some commentators including PZ Myers and Richard Carrier supporting the allegations, and others, including Flew himself, opposing them.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 18, 2007
This a great introduction to critical reasoning and thinking.
Get this book. Just like "What the Numbers Say", this is a stellar teaching tool.
I was shocked when I saw the reviews on Amazon, people complained about Flew's prose. My goodness, people, learn how to read! Flew was trying to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of book. His sentences are not simple, they reveal the complexity of the topic and ideas, but they are readable and if you can't follow them the first time, re-read them! He does use some complex sentence structures, but I liked that, I didn't feel like he was treating the reader (me) as a moron requiring ideas to be pureed and spoon fed in order to understand them, but rather he was revealing the complexity of the ideas, and requiring the reader (again, me) to stay focused.
Enough critiquing the critics, I found this book to be what I like in a book, challenging, full of "Ah-ha!" moments, and made me think about areas I hadn't considered before, and rethink some areas where I had fallen into fallacies of various sorts.
This will remain in my library as a reference book, a way to check myself, to be used as a standard against which I can measure if I'm truly seeking the truth of the matter, or just seeking to defend a cherished belief. And I'll be seeking other books akin to this one.
Get this book. Just like "What the Numbers Say", this is a stellar teaching tool.
I was shocked when I saw the reviews on Amazon, people complained about Flew's prose. My goodness, people, learn how to read! Flew was trying to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of book. His sentences are not simple, they reveal the complexity of the topic and ideas, but they are readable and if you can't follow them the first time, re-read them! He does use some complex sentence structures, but I liked that, I didn't feel like he was treating the reader (me) as a moron requiring ideas to be pureed and spoon fed in order to understand them, but rather he was revealing the complexity of the ideas, and requiring the reader (again, me) to stay focused.
Enough critiquing the critics, I found this book to be what I like in a book, challenging, full of "Ah-ha!" moments, and made me think about areas I hadn't considered before, and rethink some areas where I had fallen into fallacies of various sorts.
This will remain in my library as a reference book, a way to check myself, to be used as a standard against which I can measure if I'm truly seeking the truth of the matter, or just seeking to defend a cherished belief. And I'll be seeking other books akin to this one.
February 3, 2013
The unfaltering far-right-wing (racist, capitalist) examples Flew uses to illustrate his logical rules and principles no doubt prefigure his near death-bed conversion to theism but, more dishearteningly, make it seem that there is some relationship between scrupulously careful thinking and reactionary thought. (Which there's not.)
February 2, 2012
This is, as the subtitle indicates, an introduction to critical reasoning. It's slightly technical, but the writing is clear and engaging, with lots of real-life examples of how we can avoid being bamboozled, by ourselves as well as by others.
April 18, 2008
Very good, but the style is a little too terse and epigrammatic, and the discussions sometimes more abstruse than in other general reading on the subject. Use your highlighter here.
August 4, 2017
NOT a "How to" book. Just avoid this rubbish.
December 13, 2017
Everybody should read this book.
February 4, 2022
There is a great and eternal need for Antony Flew's kind of common sense, because it isn't common at all.
Mr. Flew is all about bad reasoning. The kind of bad reasoning presented to us by newspaper editorial writers, political speakers, and advocates for all sorts of programs and policies, left, right, and center. It isn't that hard to think critically. One doesn't need a lot of education or special training, although a book like How to Think Straight could certainly help. I found on rereading How to Think Straight that I was reminded of a great many evasions and fallacies that I see almost every time I pick up an issue of Mother Jones, or Commentary, or Foreign Affairs, or the Atlantic.
A constant alertness to the possibility that someone is trying to tell you that something in proven, that they know something, when they in fact don't know it at all. They may believe it, but belief is a much lower standard than knowledge.
I like two particular fallacies: The Genetic Fallacy, in which one asserts that something is from its origin that into which it will develop. This shows up going in either direction. You have authors such as Desmond Morris asserting that, because we evolved from something like an ape, that we are still apes. And yet, he recognized that we have evolved, so we can't still be merely apes. In the other direction, you have the anti-abortionists asserted that a cluster of four or eight cells is a human being, with all the rights thereto appertaining. An acorn is not an oak tree, and an oak tree is not an acorn.
The Naturalistic Fallacy is the move of going directly from "is" to "ought." There is a whole body of literature, going back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, establishing the point that no set of facts creates a moral obligation. You need a preexisting maxim to which you can compare the current set of facts.
Great book! Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to write, to speak, or just to understand how the fellow on television is trying to mislead us.
Mr. Flew is all about bad reasoning. The kind of bad reasoning presented to us by newspaper editorial writers, political speakers, and advocates for all sorts of programs and policies, left, right, and center. It isn't that hard to think critically. One doesn't need a lot of education or special training, although a book like How to Think Straight could certainly help. I found on rereading How to Think Straight that I was reminded of a great many evasions and fallacies that I see almost every time I pick up an issue of Mother Jones, or Commentary, or Foreign Affairs, or the Atlantic.
A constant alertness to the possibility that someone is trying to tell you that something in proven, that they know something, when they in fact don't know it at all. They may believe it, but belief is a much lower standard than knowledge.
I like two particular fallacies: The Genetic Fallacy, in which one asserts that something is from its origin that into which it will develop. This shows up going in either direction. You have authors such as Desmond Morris asserting that, because we evolved from something like an ape, that we are still apes. And yet, he recognized that we have evolved, so we can't still be merely apes. In the other direction, you have the anti-abortionists asserted that a cluster of four or eight cells is a human being, with all the rights thereto appertaining. An acorn is not an oak tree, and an oak tree is not an acorn.
The Naturalistic Fallacy is the move of going directly from "is" to "ought." There is a whole body of literature, going back to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, establishing the point that no set of facts creates a moral obligation. You need a preexisting maxim to which you can compare the current set of facts.
Great book! Highly recommended for anyone who wishes to write, to speak, or just to understand how the fellow on television is trying to mislead us.
October 17, 2017
How to Think Straight
Dry, scholarly written book from British author. Book is formatted like the Aristotle’s Politics, and written in a similar style. Book covers common logical errors, writing in a more technical manner and references the original Latin for the errors. Most of them became familiar with logical errors I already knew, such as the a before b, thus a caused B error, errors of assumption and errors of shifting positions. Biggest benefit of the book would be the first couple of chapters where the difference between a valid and invalid argument is explained. Arguments are valid or invalid; conclusions are either true or false; not any other way. Thomas Sowell is referenced frequently , his works serving as examples to critical thinking the author is trying to get his readers to emulate. Also referenced where the works of John Locke, David Hume, Descartes, Thomas Hobbs and other famous philosophers and thereby provides good historical insights.
Verbatim excerpts:
1.15 This apparent third possibility is thus the possibility of equivocation. The word ‘equivocation’ is here defined as ‘the employment of some word or expression in two or more different senses without distinction in the same context.’ If equivocators realize that they are equivocating in their employment of one the key terms in an argument, then their performance are certainly disingenuous. If they do not realize this, then equally certainly, they are ‘not fully masters of the meanings of all the words they have uttered.” In the most literal sense they do not know what they are talking about.
5.35 …For to express oneself in a public language is to undertake to speak and ask to be understood in accordance with the established meaning of that language. So to say something in some public language and then afterward to insist that you intended it to be interpreted in accordance with some private and previously unexplained personal conventions of your own is to break the contract which you implicitly made when you started to speak that language.
Figuring..Concerning the official economic statistics published by USSR during Cold War
6.28 Of course here and now in this matter it is unlikely that such figures would be invented. But it is well to remember that both the CIA and some leading US economist were apparently misled by their study of official Soviet statistics to believe, until nearly the time when its collapses became notorious, that the Soviet economy was healthy. We may also recall the story of the very senior judge in the former British Indian Empire who told a young British civil servant: “when you are bit older you will not quote Indian statistics with that assurance..What you must never forget is that every one of those comes in the first instance from the chowty dar [village watchman], who just puts down what he %^$# well pleases.”
7.13 The nerve of the argument, and it is an argument, that comes up all the time and all over the place, is that if this evolved from that, then this must always be that or at least it must always be really or essentially that. Yet a moment’s thought shows that this argument is absurd. For to say that this evolved from that implies this is different from that, and not the same. It is therefore peculiarly preposterous to offer as the fruit of evolutionary insight a systematic development of the thesis that we are what our ancestors were. Oaks are not, thought they grow from acorns; and for better or for worse civilized people are not though they evolved from, apes.
Dry, scholarly written book from British author. Book is formatted like the Aristotle’s Politics, and written in a similar style. Book covers common logical errors, writing in a more technical manner and references the original Latin for the errors. Most of them became familiar with logical errors I already knew, such as the a before b, thus a caused B error, errors of assumption and errors of shifting positions. Biggest benefit of the book would be the first couple of chapters where the difference between a valid and invalid argument is explained. Arguments are valid or invalid; conclusions are either true or false; not any other way. Thomas Sowell is referenced frequently , his works serving as examples to critical thinking the author is trying to get his readers to emulate. Also referenced where the works of John Locke, David Hume, Descartes, Thomas Hobbs and other famous philosophers and thereby provides good historical insights.
Verbatim excerpts:
1.15 This apparent third possibility is thus the possibility of equivocation. The word ‘equivocation’ is here defined as ‘the employment of some word or expression in two or more different senses without distinction in the same context.’ If equivocators realize that they are equivocating in their employment of one the key terms in an argument, then their performance are certainly disingenuous. If they do not realize this, then equally certainly, they are ‘not fully masters of the meanings of all the words they have uttered.” In the most literal sense they do not know what they are talking about.
5.35 …For to express oneself in a public language is to undertake to speak and ask to be understood in accordance with the established meaning of that language. So to say something in some public language and then afterward to insist that you intended it to be interpreted in accordance with some private and previously unexplained personal conventions of your own is to break the contract which you implicitly made when you started to speak that language.
Figuring..Concerning the official economic statistics published by USSR during Cold War
6.28 Of course here and now in this matter it is unlikely that such figures would be invented. But it is well to remember that both the CIA and some leading US economist were apparently misled by their study of official Soviet statistics to believe, until nearly the time when its collapses became notorious, that the Soviet economy was healthy. We may also recall the story of the very senior judge in the former British Indian Empire who told a young British civil servant: “when you are bit older you will not quote Indian statistics with that assurance..What you must never forget is that every one of those comes in the first instance from the chowty dar [village watchman], who just puts down what he %^$# well pleases.”
7.13 The nerve of the argument, and it is an argument, that comes up all the time and all over the place, is that if this evolved from that, then this must always be that or at least it must always be really or essentially that. Yet a moment’s thought shows that this argument is absurd. For to say that this evolved from that implies this is different from that, and not the same. It is therefore peculiarly preposterous to offer as the fruit of evolutionary insight a systematic development of the thesis that we are what our ancestors were. Oaks are not, thought they grow from acorns; and for better or for worse civilized people are not though they evolved from, apes.
July 21, 2017
It's a decent enough intro to logic, but I was expecting something else. The author seems more concerned about 'debunking' and tearing down other people's arguments, than with how to improve one's own thinking.
He outright says this is *not* the intention of the book, but that's very much what it was because of his method of 'learning from examples of flawed logic (that I totally disagree with)'.
I had however no problem with the selection of examples he used, even though many of his arguments were ones I disagreed with (like his using homosexuality as an example of something that was 'obviously' not 'naturally right') it serves one of the main lessons of the book: things can be logical without being true.
He outright says this is *not* the intention of the book, but that's very much what it was because of his method of 'learning from examples of flawed logic (that I totally disagree with)'.
I had however no problem with the selection of examples he used, even though many of his arguments were ones I disagreed with (like his using homosexuality as an example of something that was 'obviously' not 'naturally right') it serves one of the main lessons of the book: things can be logical without being true.
August 31, 2011
Antony Flew is a philosopher and this book, while not the easiest read ever, presents situations and issues that require critical thinking skills (which appear to be sorely lacking in the world today). He shows how to spot logical fallacies as well as how to critically examine the evidence for and against a proposition. It probably helps to have some background or understanding of philosophy or logic before reading this book.
June 19, 2012
Terribly written. Reading each sentence was a chore. If the purpose of writing this book was to convey ideas, then, as the hopeful recipient of those ideas I beleive he has failed. If the author's intent was to sound "smart", then congrats, buddy, you did it.
March 2, 2016
Practical book, worth reading more than once. Numbered paragraphs, and frequent cross-references, make this a handy reference work. Note: Be aware that many of Flew's examples reflect his own political and religious inclinations.
July 25, 2011
Read JAN 2003
June 27, 2013
Great book. Finished ages ago, so cannot give detailed review. It is what it says it is.
June 18, 2014
I am going to have to reread this one at some point. A handbook of terms, like The Philosopher's Toolkit, is helpful.
October 23, 2016
A bit outdated but still a useful overview of popular errors in reasoning.
February 15, 2009
Very good.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews