Category: Logic

Stephen Hawking once pronounced that he thought his brain was little more than a computer and that, because of this, he was unafraid to die: “I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story …

The most basic thing we can ask about anything is “What is it?” Young children explicitly ask this question all the time. But even adults do it, although they may not do it explicitly, or even think about doing it at all. We ask this about words we don’t know, and things we encounter for …

One of the most common modern beliefs is that science is rational while religion is not. This dogma has been asserted again and again, most loudly by atheist thinkers. I say “asserted” rather than “argued” because, like most dogmas, it is never actually argued for, only assumed. It is simply repeated, again and again, almost …

One of the things a logic student learns is that, of the 64 possible kinds of arguments (also called syllogisms), only 19 of them are valid. Let’s take the most common argument form of all: PREMISE #1: All flowers are plants (A) PREMISE #2: All roses are flowers (A) CONCLUSION: Therefore, all roses are plants …

Each of us in our daily lives hears a lot of arguments, and all of them are different. But, in one respect, there are only two basic ways to argue. We might call these two kinds of argument “arguing forward” and “arguing backward.” The First Way: Modus Ponens Arguing forward involves beginning with a principle …

The term “language arts” is a familiar term for anyone involved in education. But although many people have heard it, few can say exactly what it means. Most of the time we settle for a random listing of the things we have been taught are included under the label: reading, writing, spelling, literature, grammar, and …

One of the most common mistakes I see in logic instruction in many schools is to begin teaching it by having students study informal fallacies. It’s not that it does them any damage; it just doesn’t do them as much good as many educators seem to think. The Two Kinds of Logic There are two …

You’ve heard the word before, but what does it mean? Here’s the lowdown on the second leg of the trivium. Introduction The best way to answer the question “What is logic?” is with a definition. But that is easier said than done. Throughout history, many people have thought and written about the subject of logic, …

Every subject that is systematic has a certain inherent order to it that dictates how it should be approached. In some subjects this order is more explicit than in others. In mathematics, for example, there is a widely acknowledged sequence of what should be learned and when it should be taught. In other subjects, however, …

The United States is in the midst of a presidential election. Like all such elections, it involves two, sometimes three, major candidates, each of whom tries to persuade the voters to vote for him or her. Some candidates do this well and others don’t. But they could all do it better if they knew Aristotle’s principles of rhetoric. Classical rhetoric is …