Introduction
scrutiny, and were not simply, nor only, a matter of revelation. By studying logic and critical thinking, you will be equipping yourself with the same skills that enabled them, and people like them, to become heroes. As an exercise, see if you can think of more people to add to this list, and give a few reasons to support why they belong there.
world. Logic examines not what people ought to think, but it examines how we actually do think – when we are thinking clearly! Here’s a very short exercise which may help to show you that you already have within your mind everything you need to understand logic and critical reasoning. Consider the following two sentences: 1. All men are mortal.
Is logic difficult? 10
You might hear people say that they are no good at math, or at computer programming, or at some other kind of activity that requires a lot of concentration. When I was in high school, I used to believe that I was very bad at math. I resented going to math classes, and so I didn’t study, and (therefore!) scored poorly on tests and exams. But one day I found myself making my own video games on my Commodore 128 computer, with no other help besides the dictionary of commands. Then a few years later I was coding HTML scripts by hand, which I learned to do by reading the source codes of other people’s web sites. I eventually realized that I was actually rather good at math, or rather that I could be really good at it if I really wanted to be. Thinking rationally and critically is much the same thing. It’s actually fairly easy, once you get into the habit of doing it. Most people are born with an ability to perform complex computational tasks built right into their brains. It’s true that we often make mistakes when we try to calculate big numbers in our heads, or when we try to calculate probabilities without much information to start with. Nonetheless, the ability to think deliberately, precisely, and analytically is a large part of what it is to be human. Indeed, every human language, all 8,000 or so of them, have complex computational operators built right into the grammar and syntax, which we use to speak and be understood about anything we may want to talk about. When we study logic, we study (among other things) those very operators as they work themselves out, not only in our thinking, but also in our speaking to each other, and in many of the ways we relate to each other and the
2. Socrates is a man.
As almost anyone can see, these two sentences have a relationship to each other. For one thing, there’s a topic of discussion that appears in both of them: ‘men’. Both sentences also follow the same grammatical structure: they name an object and they name at least one property that belongs to, or can be attributed to, that object. But they also have another, more subtle relation to each other. That subtle relation tells you what should follow next. Here are three possibilities: a. Therefore, we’re having Greek tonight! b. Therefore, Socrates is a nerd. c. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
To most people, the answer is so obvious that I don’t need to state which one it is. That’s because logical and rational thinking, as already mentioned, is something we all naturally do, all the time. That example, it may interest you to know, was used by the philosopher Aristotle more than two thousand years ago, and it is still a favourite among philosophy teachers today: we use it as a way of tipping the hat to our predecessors. Let’s look at two more examples, which might show a little more of how that subtle relation works. 1. All the houses built in that neighbourhood are post-war bungalows. 2. My house is in that neighbourhood. 3. Therefore – a. My house is a rotting, decrepit shack. b. My house is a grand chateau. c. Long John Silver was a rotten businessman.