Kemp’s Creative Happiness Blog

You may be familiar with the situation: Someone presents an argument you find is not quite sustainable and yet you are holding back with your opinion for various reasons. You’re not sure how to formulate your criticism, you haven’t had enough time to think thoroughly through objections to your position that may arise. You may also feel insecure because a number of remarkable characters agree full heartedly with the argument provided.

According to Alain De Botton, in his book ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’, a correct statement is one incapable of being rationally contradicted. A statement is true if it cannot be disproved. If it can, however many believe it, however grand they may be, it must be false and we are right to doubt it.

So, don’t feel discouraged and try to follow the Socratic Method for Thinking when considering a statement and your response to it:

THE SOCRATIC METHOD FOR THINKING

1. Locate a statement confidently described as common sense.
2. Imagine for a moment that, despite the confidence of the person proposing it, the statement is false. Search for situations or contexts where the statement would not be true.
3. If an exception if found, the definition must be false or at least imprecise.
4. The initial statement must be nuanced to take the exception into account.
5. If one subsequently finds exceptions to the improved statements, the process should be repeated. The truth, in so far as a human being is able to attain such a thing, lies in a statement which it seems impossible to disprove. It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
6. The product of thought is, whatever Aristophanes insinuated, superior to the product of intuition.

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