Summary Of Alex Osborn's Groupthink

A very good reading for figuring out the purpose of philosophy is “Groupthink” by Jonah Lehrer. In this story there are multiple examples of what brainstorming can do and what it cannot do. Alex Osborn wrote a book called “Your Creative Power,” and it described his thoughts on creative secrets. He wrote about how working with groups is very effective and how all the groups should brainstorm and that will make everything 100x better. Osborn states that the type of philosophy being used in his book is brainstorming and at first it was proven to be true, but later in the years and more studies being done, they realized his way was not effective. Osborn believed that you should say whatever you think whenever you want and that you should not be

All five teams had the same problem but they were given different instructions. The first set of groups were given the brainstorming rule which includes no criticism. The next groups were given what Nemeth called the “debate” groups. They could say what they want and they could criticize. The brainstorming groups came up with more solutions to the problem but the debate groups came up with more creative solutions. Osborn was actually wrong when he said brainstorming without criticism is the better way to go. If we did not have philosophy than we would have not known that working in group environments, we need criticism. Philosophy does not just teach us about what our thoughts are and what they mean but it teaches us a lot more, like how to solve solutions in the best way

Socrates wants to know Laches opinion on courage and endurance because he believes that Laches is wrong. This again, runs right along with philosophy, here are two of the most well-known philosophers talking about courage and stating their own opinions. The entire time they are trying to figure out what courage is and what endurance has to do with it. At the end they finally agree that if someone saw them in action they would think they were courage’s but if someone heard them talking about it then they would not be courageous because that means they do not know what courageous means. The men do not agree on anything until the very end Laches starts to question himself and wonders if he is correct or not. At the very end neither one really says that they fully understand what couragoues means so they go and invite their friend Nicias to join into their conversation because they think he might have a better understanding of the situation. The positive ending to the story is when Socrates says that if they agree then the courage will not laugh at them. So as long as they agree on the answer then it becomes “correct.” This is another reason why philosophy is so important, because you cannot take two opinions and make the answer correct. You have to get multiple opinions on one situation which is called philosophy and that is how you come up with the correct