ITL1: What is Logic About?

Pablo Cobreros 1

1 Sentences, Propositions and Arguments

Logic is the part of Philosophy studying the relation of following from, as when we say
that from the fact that every man is mortal and the fact that Socrates is a man follows
that Socrates is mortal. In other words, Logic deals with argument validity.
In order to understand what it takes for an argument to be valid we need to understand, in
the first place, what is an argument. In turn, in order to understand what is an argument
we need to grasp the ideas of proposition and of declarative sentence.
A sentence, generally speaking, is a sequence of words belonging to a language that con-
forms the grammar of that language and that it can be used for communication within
that language. Normally, sentences are made up of several words. The word ‘table’, is,
taken in isolation, of little use to communicate a thought. If Mary enters the room and
tells me ‘table’ it is very likely that I won’t be able to understand what she’s trying to
convey. If, on the contrary, she says

(1) would you mind to hand me the pencil on the table?

well, in that case she is clearly communicating something and that is, therefore, definitely
a sentence.
There are different types of sentences. The previous sentence expresses a request, and it
does not make sense to wonder whether it is true or false. The kind of sentences of which
it makes sense to ask about their truth or falsity are known as declarative sentences. These
sentences declare how the world is, like in the following example,

(2) No mammal have feathers

Among the different types of sentences, declarative sentences are those of interest for
Logic. If you want to know whether a sentence is a declarative sentence you need just to
ask yourself whether it makes sense of it saying that is true (or false).
Different declarative sentences can express the same content. For example,

(3) Mi nombre es Pablo

(4) Nire izena Pablo da

(5) My name is Pablo

A proposition is the content of a declarative sentence. Though sentences (3) to (5) are all
different (since each belongs to a different language) they express the same proposition.
Like declarative sentences, propositions are the kind of things of which we say that are
true or false.
As we shall see in these lectures, declarative sentences (and, correspondingly, propositions)
can be simple or complex. A complex sentence is a sentence that contains other sentences
as components glued together with some logical constant, like in “If you don’t work hard,
you won’t pass this course” (which is compound out of “You don’t work hard” and “you
ITL1: What is Logic About? Pablo Cobreros 2

won’t pass this course” glued together with a conditional). Very often, however, when
a philosophical text talks about “propositions” or “declarative sentences” is talking about
simple sentences or propositions.
An argument is a set of propositions where some of the propositions are the premises and
some the conclusion. Arguments in natural language have, normally, several premises and
only one conclusion. In natural language we use expressions like ‘therefore’, ‘it follows’ or
‘as a consequence’ in order to mark the distinction between the conclusion and the premises
of the argument.

(6) If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal

Socrates is a man
Therefore,
Socrates is mortal

It is worth noticing that an argument is made up, not only by the propositions it contains,
but also, by which are counted as premises and which as conclusions. Consider the following
argument,

(7) If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal

Socrates is mortal
Therefore,
Socrates is a man

This argument contains the same propositions as the argument in (6). However, these are
different arguments since, as we shall see, while argument (6) is valid, argument (7) is not.
In some Logic handbooks you might find the symbol ‘∴’ instead of ‘Therefore’. Thus, for
example, the argument in (7) could be written:

(8) If Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal

Socrates is mortal
∴
Socrates is a man

Contrary to declarative sentences and propositions, arguments are not true or false (prop-
erly speaking) but valid or invalid.

2 Argument validity: the informal idea

Informally speaking, we say that an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises
to be true and its conclusion false. We will occasionally use the expression ‘logical conse-
quence’ with identical meaning. Suppose we have an argument with two premises A, B
and a conclusion C,
ITL1: What is Logic About? Pablo Cobreros 3

(9) The argument A, B ∴ C is valid,

(10) C is a logical consequence of A and B,
(11) It is impossible for A and B to be true and C false.

From now on we will consider the claims in (9), (10) and (11) as perfectly equivalent.
So far so good. An argument is valid (informally speaking) when it is not possible for its
premises to be true and its conclusion false. Let’s pause and see first what we DON’T
mean with this definition:

(i) A valid argument is a true argument.

(ii) A valid argument has a valid conclusion.
(iii) A valid argument has a true conclusion.
(iv) If an argument is valid and its premises are true, its conclusion is not possibly false.

The statement in (i) makes no sense: arguments are not true or false. Similarly for (ii).In
order to see that (iii) is not the case, consider the argument,

(12) The platypus is a feathered mammal

∴
Some mammals have feathers

The argument is clearly valid, in the sense that it is impossible for its premises to be true
and its conclusion false. In other words, it’s not possible that the platypus is a feathered
mammal and that no mammal have feathers. It turns out, however, that the conclusion of
the argument is false (of course: its premise is false as well).
The statement in (iv) is trickier since it could be read in at least two different ways,

(iv−a) If an argument is valid it is not possible that: its premises are true and its
conclusion false X
(iv−b) If an argument is valid and its premises are true then it is impossible that: its
conclusion is false. X

Reading (iv−a) only repeats the definition of logical consequence, while reading (iv−b) says
that the conclusion of a valid argument with true premises always expresses a necessary
truth. This second reading is clearly wrong as the conclusion of a valid argument with true
premises can express a contingent truth, like in the following example,

(13) Athenians are Greeks

Plato is an Athenian
∴
Plato is Greek
ITL1: What is Logic About? Pablo Cobreros 4

It is true that Plato is Greek, but only contingently so (the birth could have taken place
in Egypt, say). Modal claims (statements involving modal expressions like ‘it is necessary
that’ etc) are fishy and have, quite often, different readings like in the following case,

A sitting woman can stand

The statement is true in the sense that a woman who is seated has the capability of standing
at some other time, but false when reading it as that it is possible to be both seated and
stood.
That an argument is valid does not mean, in general, that it is a good argument. Validity
is a minimal condition for an argument to be good, but being a good argument requires
some other properties. For a start, a good argument should, in addition to validity, have
true premises. These arguments are called sound arguments. Argument in (12) is valid
but unsound. Yet, soundness is still not enough for making an argument good. A good
argument will normally have premises that are better known than its conclusion. Consider
the argument,

(14) There are infinitely many prime numbers

(15) There is no prime smaller than 2
∴
There are some primes greater than 2

The argument is valid and its premises are true (so: the argument is sound). However, the
statement in the conclusion that there are some primes greater than 2 is much easier to
know than the statement in the first premise that there are infinitely many primes.
A good argument will probably need to meet some other conditions. Some conditions
might even vary from one context to another. Determining with more detail which are
exactly these conditions is not the competence of Logic. As we said at the very beginning,
Logic is concerned with logical consequence.

3 Argument validity: a more elaborated definition

We said so far that an argument is valid when it is impossible for its premises to be true and
its conclusion false. The problem with this definition is explaining with more detail what
do we mean by ‘impossible’ in the present context (the History of Philosophy is crowded
with discussion about what modal notions mean). In this section we will give an account
of what is logical necessity and logical possibility.
The following example is a paradigmatic case of a statement that is true with logical
necessity,

(16) If we are in Spring, then we are in Spring

Although I don’t know now exactly when are you gonna be reading this statement, I feel
confident you will agree that it is true. I am rewriting these notes on the 24th of December,
ITL1: What is Logic About? Pablo Cobreros 5

but that doesn’t matter much. If it is Spring, then it is Spring (no matter whether it is or
it is not). Take another one,

(17) If Scabbers is a rat, then Scabbers is a rat

We know the statement is true, even though there is some controversy on whether Scabbers
is or is not a rat. Statements in (16) and (17) have the same form in the sense that they
come to the same thing when we substitute their simple propositions (‘we are in Spring’,
‘Scabbers is a rat’) by a variable:

(18) If A then A

The expression in (18) is not, properly speaking, a proposition. Rather, it is the scheme
of a proposition (we can obtain a proposition out of it substituting the variable A by
simple propositions). In this sense, we cannot properly say that (18) is true or false, but
rather, that it could be true after substituting the variable A by a proposition. Now, the
peculiarity of (18) is that it doesn’t really matter which proposition you substitute A by,
the resulting proposition will be true. So (18)’s logical necessity has to do with this: that
it is true for every substitution of the variable.
In the case of (18) we can identify two kinds of expression: the variable ‘A’ and the
conditional ‘If... then... ’ We will say that the last one is a logical expression while
the first is not. The operation of substituting the variable A by a proposition will be
called ‘interpretation of the non-logical vocabulary’. Let’s go now for the more elaborated
definition of logical necessity, possibility and impossibility,

A proposition P is true with logical necessity, when P is true for every interpretation of
its non-logical vocabulary.
A proposition P is logically possible, when P is true for at least one interpretation of
its non-logical vocabulary.
A proposition P is logically impossible, when P is not true for any interpretation of its
non-logical vocabulary.

Accordingly, we will say that an argument is valid when there is no interpretation

(of the non-logical vocabulary) where all the premises of the argument are true and the
conclusion false. Equivalently, we will also say that an argument is valid when there is no
counterexample to it (a counterexample for an argument is an interpretation that makes
all premises true and the conclusion false).

***

The previous definition provides a very basic but recurring idea in many approaches to
Logic. According to it, in order to accurately characterize a relationship of logical conse-
quence, we must, in the first place, specify which language (“logical” or “formal” language)
are we using. A formal language will be constructed out of logical vocabulary and non-
logical vocabulary. Secondly, we should specify what an interpretation for the non-logical
ITL1: What is Logic About? Pablo Cobreros 6

vocabulary is and how, given an interpretation, this extends to all the statements of the
language. Therefore, to characterize a logic, we need to fill in all the section of the following
scheme:

No-lógico

Vocabulario
Lógico
Lenguaje

Gramática
Interpretación
Semántica
Extensión

Question 1. Is every sentence a declarative sentence?

Question 2. Explain the difference between a sentence and a proposition

Question 3. In what sense can a proposition be complex?

Question 4. Explain why an argument is not (only) a set of propositions.

Question 5. What does it mean that an argument is true?

Question 6. What does it mean that an argument is (informally speaking) valid?

Question 7. What is the logical vocabulary? The conditional is one logical expressions,
which other logical expressions do you know about?

Question 8. Explain the notion of a counterexample (for an argument).

References
Priest, G. (2008). An Introduction to Non-Classical Logic: From If to Is. Cambridge
University Press.