Stebbing was the first woman to hold a philosophy chair in the United Kingdom, as well as the first female President of Humanists UK.

[7][4] Her thesis for the same, Pragmatism and French Voluntarism, subsequently being published in the Girton College Studies series.

[10][11] In 1927 the London University title of reader in philosophy was conferred upon her and held in conjunction with her position at Bedford College.

[3] Stebbing was promoted to professor in 1933, thus becoming the first woman to hold a philosophy chair in the United Kingdom, an event that was, as Siobhan Chapman notes, "headline news".

[13] Stebbing was a pupil of William Ernest Johnson; according to John Wisdom she was most influenced by G. E. Moore, and was a point of contact with the Vienna Circle, first inviting Rudolf Carnap to talk in the UK.

[3][2] Following her early death, a group of scholars, including C. D. Broad, G. E. Moore, Helen Wodehouse and Dorothy Tarrant set up the L. S. Stebbing Memorial Fund to endow a scholarship for graduate study in philosophy.

"[18]Stebbing's philosophical significance has been more recently recognised by, and explored within, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which commissioned, and in 2017 published, a publicly accessible online entry on her life and work by Michael Beaney and Siobhan Chapman.

[22] As it appeared in print (in both 1939 and 1941) it runs, in full, as follows: "There is an urgent need to-day," writes Professor Stebbing, "for the citizens of a democracy to think well.

Published on the eve of the Second World War, Stebbing wrote in the Preface: "I am convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance.

p.9 [1952][23]Chapter VI opens thus:"Some forms of ineffective thinking are due to our not unnatural desire to have confident beliefs about complicated matters with regard to which we must take some action or other.

This metaphor seems to me to be appropriate, because potted thinking is easily accepted, is concentrated in form, and has lost the vitamins essential to mental nourishment.

Vitamins are essential for the natural growth of our bodies; the critical questioning at times of our potted beliefs is necessary for the development of our capacity to think to some purpose."