Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy

Citation

Blackburn, S. (2001). Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford University Press. (First published 1999.)

Chapter Summary

Think is a single-author introduction organised by problems rather than by period. It has an introduction, eight chapters with one-word or short titles, and notes, a bibliography and an index. The preface says the book grew out of years of trying to interest students and a wider public in ideas, and that a glossary was left out for brevity. The introduction and Chapter 1 are divided into short sections with headings. According to the publisher's description, each chapter is a self-contained guide to one major issue.

Introduction

The introduction says the book is for people who want to think about "the big themes": knowledge, reason, truth, mind, freedom, destiny, identity, God, goodness and justice. Blackburn describes philosophy as "conceptual engineering", the study of the structure of our thought. He lists questions about ourselves, about the world, and about how the two relate. Such questions, he argues, arise from self-reflection and cannot be settled by empirical procedures. Philosophical skill is presented as more a "knowing how" than a body of knowledge. A section titled "What is the point?" gives high-ground, middle-ground and low-ground answers to why reflection matters. Examples include how belief in universal selfishness changes behaviour, Copernicus, and Einstein's reflection on simultaneity. The introduction closes by setting the book against "postmodern" scepticism about reason.

Chapter 1: Knowledge

The chapter starts from the thought that the world might be a dream and from the relation between appearance and reality. It then follows Descartes' Meditations as "edited highlights", under section headings such as "Losing the World", "The Evil Demon", "Motivations, Questions" and "The Elusive 'I'". It covers the method of hyperbolic doubt, the wax example, the cogito and what kind of "I" survives the doubt. It also asks whether Descartes' appeal to God's guarantee of clear and distinct ideas brings in a double standard, leaving him stranded on "the lonely rock of the Cogito".

Chapter 2: Mind

The second chapter takes up the mind. Its ground is anticipated in the introduction, which asks what consciousness is and whether one can be sure that other people's experiences are like one's own, and which picks out the strict separation many people draw between mind and body as a typical source of philosophical trouble.

Chapter 3: Free Will

On whether human beings might be "puppets", programmed to do what they believe they do freely. Published descriptions of the book place the debate between free will and determinism here; the introduction also mentions fatalism as a belief that can paralyse action.

Chapter 4: The Self

Personal identity and the self. Chapter 1's section on "the elusive 'I'" already raises the question of what is left of the self once body, history and social relations are set aside.

Chapter 5: God

Arguments for and against the existence of God. The introduction names Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion among the classics the book quotes from.

Chapter 6: Reasoning

Reason and argument. The introduction treats the ability to avoid confusion, detect ambiguities and make reliable arguments as the core of philosophical skill.

Chapter 7: The World

The publisher's material gives no detail on this chapter. Among the introduction's "questions about the world" are why nature keeps on in a regular way, why causation runs from past to future, and whether the world presupposes a Creator.

Chapter 8: What to Do

The closing chapter turns to ethics. Published descriptions mention the question of whether there is a morality independent of human opinion.

Key Concepts

Introduction

• Conceptual engineering: Blackburn's name for philosophy; it studies how our concepts are built, how they connect and what would change if they were altered.
• Empirical versus reflective questions: questions settled by observation and agreed procedures, versus questions about our own concepts that need reflection.
• Knowing how: philosophical ability as a skill in handling arguments, ambiguities and alternatives, not a stock of facts.

Chapter 1: Knowledge

• Hyperbolic doubt: Descartes' method of doubting everything that can be doubted, including the evidence of the senses.
• The Evil Demon: the hypothesis of a deceiver who could make all experience misleading.
• The cogito: the claim that thinking guarantees one's own existence, and the question of what kind of "I" it secures.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Problem-led and self-contained. The introduction states that the book presupposes no other resources and can be read without the primary texts. It can also be read alongside the classics it quotes, such as Descartes' Meditations, Berkeley's Three Dialogues and Hume's Enquiry and Dialogues.
• Shows how to read a philosopher. Chapter 1 does not just summarise Descartes. Sections such as "Motivations, Questions" stop to ask how a passage should be read and whether its motivation is satisfactory, modelling the skill the introduction says matters most.
• Clear and lively writing. Mark Sainsbury's review in Mind (2001) described the book as well written. The New York Times (2001) reported that it found a large audience in hardback.
• A case for philosophy. The introduction offers a direct argument for why reflection matters, with examples from economics, astronomy and physics, which suits students unsure why they are studying the subject.

Limitations

• Opinionated in places. Blackburn writes in his own voice and does not hide his verdicts; the introduction, for example, calls one remark of Marx's among "the silliest famous remarks" and declares the book against postmodern scepticism. Readers should treat such judgements as positions to test.
• Selective coverage. With eight broad chapters, the book cannot survey every field; the chapter titles show nothing specifically on political philosophy or aesthetics.
• Disputed treatment of knowledge. Sainsbury's review, while positive overall, criticised the discussion of knowledge, the topic of the opening chapter.
• No glossary. The preface says one was left out for brevity, so technical terms must be checked elsewhere, for example in Blackburn's Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.

Where It Fits in the Course

Think is a natural first book for the introductory course. Russell's The Problems of Philosophy is the classic primary text on knowledge: a short, continuous argument from 1912. Blackburn covers a wider range of problems in a modern voice, and both start from Descartes-style doubt about the external world. Reading Blackburn's first chapter next to Russell's opening chapters shows two treatments of the same problem. The OpenStax Introduction to Philosophy is an open textbook that covers logic, metaphysics, epistemology and value theory, draws on many traditions and includes guided activities; it suits courses that want more structure and breadth than a single-author essay provides.

For historical background, Anthony Kenny's A New History of Western Philosophy supplies context on the philosophers Blackburn discusses. Thomas Nagel's The View from Nowhere develops a single argument about subjective and objective standpoints and is best kept for after a first introduction such as this one.

How to Use This Book

The book is aimed at readers with no philosophical training. Read the introduction first, since it explains what kind of thinking the rest of the book asks for. Then take Chapter 1, which shows the book's method most fully: it reads Descartes passage by passage and stops to test each move. The remaining chapters can then follow the order of a course syllabus, since each is presented as a self-contained guide.

As the introduction suggests, read the classic texts alongside: Descartes' Meditations with Chapter 1, and Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion with the chapter on God. After each section, restate the argument in a few numbered steps and decide which step you would challenge, which is the "knowing how" the book aims to train. Keep a dictionary of philosophy at hand in place of the omitted glossary, and use the notes and bibliography to choose further reading.