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Laws of Logic

This document deals with the definition of logic as well its importance.

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Erwin Sabornido
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16 views3 pages

Laws of Logic

This document deals with the definition of logic as well its importance.

Uploaded by

Erwin Sabornido
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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This article is about the study of correct reasoning.

For other uses, see Logic


(disambiguation) and Logician (disambiguation).
"Logical" and "Logically" redirect here. For the rapper, see Logic (rapper). For the British
company, see Logically (company).

Logic studies valid forms of inference like modus ponens.

Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic.
Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines
how conclusions follow from premises due to the structure of arguments alone,
independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal
fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. Informal logic examines arguments
expressed in natural language while formal logic uses formal language. When used as
a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates
a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such
as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.

Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion.
An example is the argument from the premises "it's Sunday" and "if it's Sunday then I
don't have to work" to the conclusion "I don't have to work".[1] Premises and conclusions
express propositions or claims that can be true or false. An important feature of
propositions is their internal structure. For example, complex propositions are made up
of simpler propositions linked by logical vocabulary like (and) or (if...then). Simple
propositions also have parts, like "Sunday" or "work" in the example. The truth of a
proposition usually depends on the meanings of all of its parts. However, this is not the
case for logically true propositions. They are true only because of their logical structure
independent of the specific meanings of the individual parts.

Arguments can be either correct or incorrect. An argument is correct if its premises


support its conclusion. Deductive arguments have the strongest form of support: if their
premises are true then their conclusion must also be true. This is not the case
for ampliative arguments, which arrive at genuinely new information not found in the
premises. Many arguments in everyday discourse and the sciences are ampliative
arguments. They are divided into inductive and abductive arguments. Inductive
arguments are statistical generalizations, such as inferring that all ravens are black
based on many individual observations of black ravens.[2] Abductive arguments
are inferences to the best explanation, for example, when a doctor concludes that a
patient has a certain disease which explains the symptoms they suffer.[3] Arguments that
fall short of the standards of correct reasoning often embody fallacies. Systems of logic
are theoretical frameworks for assessing the correctness of arguments.

Logic has been studied since antiquity. Early approaches include Aristotelian
logic, Stoic logic, Nyaya, and Mohism. Aristotelian logic focuses on reasoning in the
form of syllogisms. It was considered the main system of logic in the Western world until
it was replaced by modern formal logic, which has its roots in the work of late 19th-
century mathematicians such as Gottlob Frege. Today, the most used system
is classical logic. It consists of propositional logic and first-order logic. Propositional
logic only considers logical relations between full propositions. First-order logic also
takes the internal parts of propositions into account, like predicates and quantifiers.
Extended logics accept the basic intuitions behind classical logic and extend it to other
fields, such as metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. Deviant logics, on the other
hand, reject certain classical intuitions and provide alternative explanations of the basic
laws of logic.

Definition
[edit]

The word "logic" originates from the Greek word "logos", which has a variety of
translations, such as reason, discourse, or language.[4] Logic is traditionally defined as
the study of the laws of thought or correct reasoning,[5] and is usually understood in
terms of inferences or arguments. Reasoning is the activity of drawing inferences.
Arguments are the outward expression of inferences.[6] An argument is a set of premises
together with a conclusion. Logic is interested in whether arguments are correct, i.e.
whether their premises support the conclusion.[7] These general characterizations apply
to logic in the widest sense, i.e., to both formal and informal logic since they are both
concerned with assessing the correctness of arguments.[8] Formal logic is the
traditionally dominant field, and some logicians restrict logic to formal logic.[9]

Formal logic
[edit]
Further information: Formal system

Formal logic is also known as symbolic logic and is widely used in mathematical logic. It
uses a formal approach to study reasoning: it replaces concrete expressions with
abstract symbols to examine the logical form of arguments independent of their
concrete content. In this sense, it is topic-neutral since it is only concerned with the
abstract structure of arguments and not with their concrete content.[10]

Formal logic is interested in deductively valid arguments, for which the truth of their
premises ensures the truth of their conclusion. This means that it is impossible for the
premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.[11] For valid arguments, the logical
structure of the premises and the conclusion follows a pattern called a rule of inference.
[12]
For example, modus ponens is a rule of inference according to which all arguments of
the form "(1) p, (2) if p then q, (3) therefore q" are valid, independent of what the
terms p and q stand for.[13] In this sense, formal logic can be defined as the science of
valid inferences. An alternative definition sees logic as the study of logical truths.[14] A
proposition is logically true if its truth depends only on the logical vocabulary used in it.
This means that it is true in all possible worlds and under all interpretations of its non-
logical terms, like the claim "either it is raining, or it is not".[15] These two definitions of
formal logic are not identical, but they are closely related. For example, if the inference
from p to q is deductively valid then the claim "if p then q" is a logical truth.[16]

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