Exercises: The Toolkit

1. Thought Experiment: Three Arguments, One Topic

Choose a real ethical question you actually care about. Some options: Should people be required to vote? Should eating meat be illegal? Should social media companies be regulated? Should parents be permitted to decline vaccines for their children?

Now find three arguments about this question — not necessarily ones you agree with, and not all on the same side. They can come from articles, conversations, or your own head. Write each one out in premise-conclusion form:

P1: [state the first premise]
P2: [state the second premise, if there is one]
C: Therefore, [state the conclusion]

Then, for each argument:

  1. Are the premises true? Be specific — not "I think so" but "here is the evidence for/against."
  2. Does the conclusion follow? Even if all the premises are true, does the conclusion follow necessarily? Or could someone accept the premises and reject the conclusion?
  3. What hidden premises does the argument require? What would have to be true, unstated, for the conclusion to follow from the premises?

After working through all three, write a short paragraph: which argument is the strongest? Not which one reaches the conclusion you prefer, but which one you would have the hardest time criticizing.

2. Journaling: What Changed Your Mind

Write about a time when someone changed your mind — genuinely, not just in the moment, but in a way that stuck.

Reconstruct the experience:

  • What was the original view you held?
  • What happened — was it an argument, evidence, an experience, or something else?
  • What specifically did you update? Was it a premise, or was it the conclusion itself, or was it your confidence in a view you'd been treating as more certain than it was?
  • How did it feel to change your mind? Was there resistance? Relief?

Now reflect on it from the perspective of this chapter:

  • Was the thing that changed your mind philosophically legitimate? (An argument? Evidence? A reductio?) Or was it something philosophically suspect — social pressure, emotional appeal, the mere repetition of a claim?
  • If it was philosophically legitimate, which tool from this chapter best describes it?
  • Is there something philosophically illegitimate that has also changed your mind? What does that tell you about how your beliefs actually form versus how you think they form?

3. Framework Resonance: The Principle of Charity Across the Aisle

Choose a political, ethical, or social position that you find genuinely difficult to endorse. Not a position that's merely unfamiliar — a position you have an emotional reaction against.

Write two paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: The strongest version of the view. Write it as if you're its most thoughtful advocate. Include the best arguments, the most compelling cases, the genuine values that motivate people who hold it. Do not include the worst arguments for the view. Do not include obvious objections. Just make the best case you can.

Paragraph 2: Your critique. Now explain what's wrong with it. But your critique must engage with the strong version, not with a weaker one you might prefer to attack. Identify the specific premise you reject, and say why.

After both paragraphs, answer:

  • Did writing the first paragraph shift your view at all? Not necessarily your conclusion, but your level of certainty, or your sense of how reasonable this view is to hold?
  • Is the person who holds this view necessarily wrong or necessarily unreasonable? Can a rational, well-meaning person hold it?
  • What is the strongest objection to your own critique?

4. Dialogue: Socratic Conversation with Yourself

Choose a belief you hold with considerable confidence — something you'd be willing to defend in an argument. Some possibilities: a moral conviction, a political view, a belief about what makes relationships work, a claim about human nature.

Now conduct a Socratic dialogue with yourself. You are both Socrates and the interlocutor. Socrates' job is to ask questions that test the claim; the interlocutor's job is to defend it honestly.

The structure:

You (as interlocutor): State your belief.
You (as Socrates): Ask a clarifying question: "What do you mean by [key term]?"
You (as interlocutor): Define the term.
You (as Socrates): Offer a case that tests the definition. "But what about [borderline case]?"
You (as interlocutor): Respond.
You (as Socrates): Follow up. "And does that response apply to [adjacent case]?"
[Continue for at least four exchanges]

After the dialogue, answer:

  • Did the belief survive the examination? Or did it need qualification?
  • What was the hardest question? Why was it hard?
  • Do you now hold the belief more carefully — with more specific conditions, or with more awareness of its limits?

The goal is not to defeat yourself. The goal is to understand what you actually believe and why.

5. Dinner Party: Aristotle, Your Most Contrarian Friend, and a Standup Comedian

You're hosting a dinner where the guests are:

  • Aristotle (384–322 BCE, the first systematic logician, believed that good arguments could be distinguished from bad ones and that this distinction mattered enormously)
  • Your most contrarian friend (the one who challenges every consensus, who believes that all experts have agendas, who finds the idea of "correct" reasoning deeply suspicious)
  • A standup comedian (whose job is to find the gap between what people say and what's actually true, and to say the thing that no one else will say out loud)

The topic: "Is it possible to argue in a way that's actually fair?"

Imagine the conversation. Let the contrarian challenge Aristotle's assumption that logic is neutral — "isn't 'logical' just a word for 'sounds like what powerful people already believe'?" Let the comedian point out the gap between how philosophers think they argue and how they actually argue. Let Aristotle respond in whatever way seems right to you.

After you've imagined it:

  • Who makes the most interesting point?
  • Where do you land in the conversation?
  • Is there something the contrarian gets right about the limits of formal argument that Aristotle doesn't adequately answer?

6. Progressive Project: Your Methods

Return to the Personal Philosophy document you started in Chapter 1.

Add a section called "How I Think."

Write three paragraphs:

Paragraph 1: Which tools feel natural? Looking at the toolkit in this chapter — thought experiments, argument analysis, hidden premises, the principle of charity, reductio ad absurdum, conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium — which of these feels like something you already do, at least sometimes? Describe a specific instance where you used something like one of these tools, even if you didn't have the name for it.

Paragraph 2: Where your reasoning is weakest. Be honest: which of these tools do you use least? Is it the principle of charity (do you tend to attack the weakest version of opposing views)? Is it reflective equilibrium (do you tend to follow principles without checking them against your strongest intuitions, or vice versa)? Is it conceptual analysis (do you tend to argue past people because you haven't defined your terms)? Identifying a weakness is the first step toward addressing it.

Paragraph 3: One assumption from Chapter 1. Return to the three paragraphs you wrote in Chapter 1 about your current beliefs. Choose one assumption from those paragraphs and apply one of the tools from this chapter to it. What does the tool reveal? Does the assumption survive examination, or does it need revision?

This section of your Personal Philosophy is not a description of how you ideally think. It's an honest account of how you actually think, and where you want to improve.