Benjamin Franklin is widely credited with the idea that humans are tool-making animals. It’s an idea worth dwelling on. Actually, we don’t all make tools. But we all use tools. To complement the fundamental facts that humans are tribal animals and creatures of habit, we need to add the further fundamental fact, that we are tool-using animals.
Concepts
In thinking, we make use of fundamental ‘thought-tools’: concepts. In point of fact, thinking of concepts as ‘tools we use to think with’ liberates our thinking considerably.
Including our thinking about ourselves.