LOGICA

CRITICA – a critical essay on WESTERN LOGIC

© H. J. Spencer (12 April 2019: January, 2018) pp.20; 13,500 words.
ABSTRACT
This essay is a critical review of Western Logic designed to analyze this central science from a philosophical
view. It examines logic’s historical evolution, its traditional divisions and its principles. Since logic was
introduced in the early days of the development of western philosophy, then it is appropriate to apply the clear
thinking reputation of philosophy to this central pillar of Western Philosophy. My motivation is to construct my
challenge to traditional western thinking, derived from ‘The Old Greeks’; it is particularly critical because logic
was developed from the beginning as a method for winning arguments; this was motivated by the men who
were the original creators of logic. They were often the well-educated (‘clever’) brothers of the warriors who
ran the warlike Greek city states; all of these men were convinced of the warrior values of competition and
winning. Argument was simply a verbal analogue of a combat dual between two warriors but with less lethal
results. These values have been maintained ever since in European societies, so the Clever Men have continued
with their valuable role ‘educating’ the next male generation of their societies’ rulers. Unfortunately, today
these views are obsolete because this thinking has led the world to the edge of the abyss; a new basic direction
is urgently needed: hence my major project constructed on a new Organic Metaphysics. This essay is a
standalone extract from that larger work. The thesis of this essay is that logic is a trivial topic when limited to
finite examples and generates a false aura of intellectualization when its study wanders off into vague
generalities and abstractions, mysteriously compounding its importance by deliberately adopting a mathematical
style of symbolism. This essay is designed to provide deeper insights for the general reader who has been
‘educated’ to defer to those who claim to be Masters of Logic. Symbolic logic is the mathematical schema that
gives linguistic (analytic) philosophers the sense that their approach to philosophy is as well grounded as the
‘certainties’ of mathematics. Earlier, I wrote a detailed review [‘NotLogSci’] of one of the earliest texts on
Symbolic Logic by a rare individual: a female American philosopher Susanne K. Langer. Since then, I have
agreed with her that Logic is the study of generality and especially the systematic elaboration of the concept of
abstractions with the objective of the development (some Platonically says “discovery”) of abstract forms,
contrasted with empirical science that truly discovers particular facts about reality.

There is a general perception that reason and logic are synonymous but that is only because both ways of
thinking involve the process of going step-by-step from one statement to another. Many intellectuals insist that
the acquisition of knowledge can only be made by reasoning but most (common) folk are convinced that they
can intuit new information, indeed, induction seems to rely on the intuitive generalization from experience.
Some motivation was provoked by reading an introduction to logic by a professor of linguistics {“Everything
that Linguists have Always Wanted to Know about Logic” by J. D. McCawley – Univ. of Chicago Press 1981}.
My negative reaction was confirmed by any reference to mathematics in the Index and only two to Numbers.

Although Logic was developed by philosophers and is credited with much of the social status of philosophers as
one of the principal tools for clarifying problems with natural languages, in fact, it is really an abstract algebra
hiding beneath a layer of recognizable language words. Its true nature has surfaced in the twentieth century
where it has been fully absorbed by academic mathematicians, some of whom played a major role in its revival
in the previous century. There is a need for much more skepticism whenever one hears: “But, it’s logical.”

The classical tradition (based on The Old Greeks) is to focus on definitions but this is simply self-serving, as
Webster’s Dictionary defines logic as the science of correct reasoning. I fundamentally challenge this statement
and I illustrate this challenge through description and critical thinking, often using particular examples rather
than vague generalities. The irony here is that I have to use language (and logic) to criticize logic, so here goes.
1. HISTORY
This review will begin with a fast, historical survey to identify its major contributors, as the author finds placing
a subject in its evolutionary sequence is a useful way to throw powerful light on any obscure topic. Completing
this rapid survey then allows a categorization into the major types of logic. A critical analysis is then applied
to the most common areas of logic to identify its flaws and weaknesses, specially with its overall simplistic
approach to the concept of Truth and its general weaknesses for human communication. Finally, an alternative
logic based on an outline of a NEW RELATIONSHIP Logic is offered to better reflect our growing awareness of
the special characteristics of living systems, rather than the TIMELESS foundations of traditional logics that have
underpinned our ‘dead’ metaphysics.
1.1 CLASSICAL
1.1.1 ARISTOTLE
Aristotle (384-322 BC) is generally regarded as the Godfather of the study of logic. Although not the first to
study this subject, his writings are the ones that have most influenced its later developments. His rivals, the
Sophists provided him with important raw materials, such as the construction of arguments, methods of
disputation and the discovery of fallacies. He also codified several vital ideas from his mentor, Plato especially
the techniques of classification and definition, the seeds of the syllogism and the process of ‘proof’ that Plato
called ‘dialectic’. So much so, that later Roman and medieval experts came to use interchangeably the words
logic and dialectic. In fact, the advanced educational curriculum called the Trivium covered grammar, rhetoric
and logic. These were the major components of Aristotle’s collection of five writings on this subject called
Organon, meaning Instrument or Method; seen as suggestions for producing desired results (better usage of
language). Aristotle’s last two books of the Organon collection focus on the true facts and less-secure
knowledge covered by degrees of the probable (or opinions). The final book takes on his major rivals – the
Sophists accusing them of misusing logic to produce a counterfeit of wisdom.

Aristotle analyzed human thinking into three major areas: speculative science, practical sciences (medicine) and
the Arts. Here he saw speculative science (theoretical knowledge) as the pursuit of Truth for its own sake but
the aim of practical science is action (an ulterior end). Art is divided into Making and Acting. Logic is an Art
for training the mind in building knowledge (science). Since Aristotle saw studies of reality (theoretical
knowledge) specializing into physics, mathematics and the Science of Being: metaphysics (religion) then the
subject of logic had to be the whole of discourse (human communication). Since it separates the generic forms
which discursive thought takes from the matter (or content it may have) then logic is often called a ‘formal
science’. His approach, the subjects of his first three books, especially the “Prior Analytics”, centered on
syllogisms, propositions and ‘terms’, which are the elements of propositions and together form the key elements
of the logical sequences he called the syllogisms (sometimes called ‘term logic’), invented to objectify adult
argumentation, while modernists have moved up to concepts, judgments and general reasoning. The parts of
syllogistic logic are the analysis of judgements into propositions consisting of two terms (often plural nouns or
equivalent expressions) that are related by one of a fixed number of relations and the expression of inferences
by means of syllogisms that consist of two propositions sharing a common term as premise and a conclusion
that is a proposition involving the two unrelated terms from the premises.
1.1.2 SCHOLASTIC
Scholastic logic characterizes the focus of academic logic experts in Europe between 1100 and 1700. There
were very few innovations because of its dependence on the ‘Classical’ tradition (Aristotle), its rewrites into
Latin (the language of the Catholic Church) and the influence of Christian theology so that discussions of
theology could be formalized. The switch to Latin was significant because of the perception that Logic was
about “understanding” Natural Language” and Latin was the language of educated men all across Europe. It is
a pity that the early awareness of Aristotle came through the writings of the Roman Neo-Platonist philosopher
Boëthius (c. 500 AD), who merged the new Christianity with Hellenistic thinking.
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It was not until about 1200 AD that Aristotle’s original writings reached medieval Europe through Arabian
philosophers, like Averroes; this resulted in a new revival known as the Ars Nova. Scholastic thought is known
for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of distinctions. In the classroom and in writing, it
often takes the form of explicit disputation; a topic drawn from the tradition is broached in the form of a
question, opponents' responses are given, a counterproposal is argued and opponents' arguments are rebutted.
Because of its emphasis on rigorous dialectical method, scholasticism was eventually applied to many other
fields of study. It is not a coincidence that Aristotle, nor any of his followers ever defined the word ‘Truth’ as
this necessary concept eludes all definitions but is universally implicit in our use of language. In fact, the idea
that “Truth was simply the conformity of thought with reality” is of Arabian origin, adopted by The Schoolmen.
1.2 POST-SCHOLASTIC
1.2.1 PORT-ROYAL
A new version of post-schoolmen logic resurfaced around Paris, associated with several well-regarded schools
linked to the Cistercian Abby, run by the Arnauld family. Antoine Arnauld, a leading Jansenist (a Catholic
heretical sect that emphasized sin and the predestination ideas of St. Augustine) published his “Logic or the Art
of Thinking” in 1662, which began with the definitional ideas of the child-prodigy and mathematician Blaise
Pascal (1623-1662). The emphasis here was on clarifying the concept of ‘concept’ by distinguishing between
its necessary features and its extension into its many, distinct examples; ‘triangle’ was the prototypical example.
1.2.2 LEIBNIZ
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was German polymath, who made major contributions in inventing
symbolism for both philosophy and mathematics, including a symbolic version of logic. The work of Leibniz
anticipated modern logic and analytic philosophy but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition,
in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or prior definitions rather than to direct
appeals to empirical evidence. Leibniz initiated the hijacking of logic by mathematicians with his attempts to
invent a logical calculus, when he said: “The only way to rectify our reasoning is to make them as tangible as those of
the Mathematicians, so that we can find our error at a glance and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply
say: Let us calculate without further ado, to see who is right.” Leibniz enunciated the principal properties of what
we now call conjunction (‘and’), disjunction (‘or’), negation ‘not’). The principles of Leibniz's logic and,
possibly, of his whole philosophy, reduce to these two:
1. All our ideas are compounded from a very small number of simple ideas, which he viewed as the
‘alphabet of human thought’.
2. Complex ideas proceed from these simple ideas by a uniform and symmetrical combination, analogous
to arithmetical multiplication.
Leibniz published nothing on formal logic in his lifetime; most of his writings on the subject consisted of only
working drafts. In his book (“The History of Western Philosophy”), Bertrand Russell went so far as to claim
that Leibniz had developed logic in his unpublished writings to a level, which was reached only 200 years later.
Russell's principal work on Leibniz found that many of Leibniz's most startling philosophical ideas and claims
(such as: each of the basic monads mirrors the whole universe) follow logically from Leibniz's conscious choice
to reject ‘relations between things’ as unreal. He regarded such relations as (real) qualities of things but Leibniz
only admitted unary predicates, so that: “Mary is the mother of John” describes separate qualities of Mary and
of John. This view contrasts with the relational logic of later logicians, including Russell himself.
1.3 MODERNS
It was not until the 19th century that logic made another leap forward, when the study of logic finally exposed its
mathematical roots and exploded in Western universities with their needs for certainty and idealistic bias.
1.3.1 MILL
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) rejected the mathematical bias of academia for preferring logical deduction over
induction as a method for discovering new knowledge of reality. His view that logic is best understood as a
branch of psychology had a powerful influence on thinking over the next 50 years, especially in Germany.
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1.3.2 BOOLE
George Boole (1815-1864) was a self-educated son of a poor English shoe-maker, who worked alone until his
rare talents were recognized and he was appointed the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork
(Ireland). In 1847 Boole published a pamphlet The Mathematical Analysis of Logic, the first of his works on
symbolic logic. In effect, he had manifested Leibniz’s dream by creating an “algebra of logic”. Boole totally
believed in his “Principle of Wholistic Reference” wherein every proposition implicitly refers to its total context
called now by logicians as ‘The Universe of Discourse’. The relational verb ‘refers’ is being used in its broadest
sense (loosely “is about”) and not simply as a synonym for ‘names’ in the sense of “is a name of”. For Boole,
the essential first step in the process of conceiving of a proposition preliminary to making a judgement of its
truth or falsity – or even using it in a deduction, however hypothetically – was to conceive of the appropriate
‘universe of discourse’. One huge step, which cannot be emphasized enough, was Boole’s radical introduction
of binary logic (the numbers 1 and 0 instead of the ancient ‘true’ and ‘false’). It has played a critical role in set
theory and (computer) digital technology. Logic sentences that can be expressed in classical propositional
calculus have an equivalent expression here, thus Boolean logic is sometimes used for propositional calculus
performed this way. Boolean algebra is not sufficient to capture logic formulas using quantifiers, like those
from first-order logic needed to justify arithmetic in general. If the truth values 0 and 1 are interpreted as
integers, the logical operations (‘and’ :- ∧; ‘or’ :- ∨; ‘not’ :- ¬ ) may then be expressed with the ordinary
operations of arithmetic, or by the minimum / maximum functions:
x ∧ y = x * y = min(x,y) x ∨ y = x + y – x*y ¬ x = 1 - x
1.3.3 DE MORGAN
Augustus De Morgan (1806-1871) entered England’s high-temple of Mathematics (Trinity College, Cambridge)
at the age of 16; his broad interests, particularly music, meant that he failed to ‘cram’ enough, so only finished
fourth in the highly competitive Tripos Examination. Refusing to affirm the Anglican belief, he had to leave for
the newly-opening liberal London University where he was appointed (at 22) to be professor of Mathematics.
De Morgan's work, Formal Logic, published in 1847, is highly regarded for his development of the numerically
definite syllogism. He also discovered ‘Relation Algebra’ in his Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic first
published in 1860. This algebra was extended by Peirce, (who admired De Morgan and met him shortly before
his death), and these ideas proved critical in Russell and Whitehead’s magisterial Principia.
1.3.4 PEIRCE
Charles Sanders Pierce, pronounced ‘Purse’, (1839-1914) is an American philosopher whose reputation for his
originality has grown steadily since his death. His father was a Harvard professor of mathematics and Peirce
himself started his professional career as a Harvard laboratory chemist, probably encouraging him to develop a
more practical view of the world: a philosophy finally called Pragmatism. He viewed the aim of inquiry is to
replace doubt by settled belief; he saw Truth as the long-term convergence of opinion. His contributions were
more along epistemological knowledge acquisition lines but he did focus on multi-dimensional relationships,
like the act of ‘giving’. He later lectured on the logic of science but never wrote a book (perhaps why he was
ignored so long). His irascible temperament also probably cost him a secure academic position. He was one of
the first to see logic as the formal branch of semiotics, which he defined as: “the formal doctrine of signs, which
abstracts what must be the characters of all signs used by an intelligence capable of learning by experience” –
this is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs that are understood as a tripartite scheme denoting the sign,
an object (the sign’s subject matter), the interpreter and the information will just be another sign for the same
object; so that science becomes a process of interpretation of signs; even logic is viewed as ‘formal semiotic’.
As well as rigorously formulating mathematical induction and deductive reasoning he introduced his concept of
abduction, which starts with an observation then seeks to find the simplest and most likely explanation. Peirce
must also be credited with initiating the investigation into the logical foundations of arithmetic. Peirce claimed
many times that logic precedes metaphysics.
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1.3.6 FREGE
After Boole, the next great advances (according to professional philosophers) were made by the German
mathematician Gottlob Frege (1848-1925). Though his education and early mathematical work focused
primarily on geometry, Frege's work soon turned to logic. He is most known through his rarely read 1879 text
that is called the “Begriffsschrift” (‘Concept-Script’: A Formal Language for Pure Thought modeled on
Arithmetic’) but all he seems to have done was to import standard mathematical techniques, such as functions
and variables, into logic. He also seems guilty of circular argumentation as his goal was to show that
mathematics grows out of logic (a view later called Logicism) but had begun his journey by importing
mathematics into logic. His ‘triumph’ was to introduce a symbolism (called ‘quantification’) for untangling
difficult Natural Language statements using simple functions like ‘∀(x)’ to represent “for every x” and ‘∃(x)’
“for some x”. His other ‘crime’ was to father ‘analytic philosophy’. His ‘radical’ theory of number was based
on the trivial observation that counting numbers differ by one unit. In effect, Frege recast logic in a formal
mathematical format (called ‘axiomatic predicate logic’) that removed it from any relevance for everyone
except abstract mathematicians.
1.3.7 RUSSELL & WHITEHEAD
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) established his reputation at the leading centre of mathematics in England
(Trinity College, Cambridge University) by expanding on Frege’s logicism in a graduate thesis. He then
collaborated with his tutor, Alfred North Whitehead to write the monumental “Principia Mathematica” (1910-
13) – a title picked to deliberately allude to one of Trinity’s most famous professors, Isaac Newton. Russell at
least recognized the artificiality of the concept of infinity and saw only the direct linkage between finite sets of
real objects and arithmetic, explaining Boole’s intuition between logic and binary numbers. Interestingly,
Whitehead (1861-1947) gave up on his lifelong interest in mathematics when he retired at age 63 and was
offered a full professorship in philosophy at Harvard in 1924. Although Whitehead’s first book there was on
science he soon moved beyond the empirical to a process model of religion that had be to included in a broader,
deeper view of Metaphysics.
1.3.8 GÖDEL
The Austrian Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) established his reputation in 1931 with the publication of his thesis work
on logicism, when he vitiated the whole intellectual efforts of mathematical logicians from Frege to Russell by
proving that even arithmetic is incomplete and/or inconsistent. This shattered the ancient faith in mathematics.
1.3.9 LANGER
One of the most original (and rare female) philosophers of the 20th century (and a personal favorite) is Susanne
K. Langer (1895-1985) who was Whitehead’s most original graduate student at Harvard. Steeped in logic, her
interests migrated to psychology (feelings) and Art. She extended Peirce’s and Whitehead’s intuitions about
symbols proposing that symbolism lay at the heart of the mind, aesthetics and the ineffable foundations of real
Feeling in every human’s life through the universal experience of Intuition. She wrote one of the first popular
expositions on “Symbolic Logic” in 1937 [reviewed in my Not-Logical-Science essay], emphasizing syntax
(grammar) rather than the more important semantics (meanings). Her goal was to defend Whitehead’s project
of helping his student (Russell) in their setting up logic as the foundation of mathematics by creating a circular
argument showing the linear symbolizing (mathematizing) the foundations of logic by defining Logic as the
study of generality and especially the systematic elaboration of the concept of abstractions with the objective
of the development (Langer Platonically says “discovery”) of abstract forms, contrasted with science that truly
discovers particular facts about reality. Langer simply assumes that mathematics is both a science and is
inherently a positive contribution to humanity. Langer, like most other mathematicians, simply assumes that
results of this ‘science’ are always Truths.
2. TYPES OF LOGIC
Since Logic is considered a branch of philosophy, it seems appropriate to review its definition as proposed by
professional philosophers. But its etymology is significant; it derives from the Greek word ‘logike’, originally
related to the larger concept ‘logos’, meaning “word (as spoken), thought, idea, reason”.
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In modern dictionaries, it is simply defined (self-servingly) as “the science of correct reasoning”. Technically,
it is usually described as valid relationships between propositions (grammatically correct sentences with
meaningful content). A valid inference is one where there is a specific relation of logical (formal) support
between the assumptions of the inference and its conclusion. (In ordinary discourse, inferences may be signified
by words like therefore, hence, thus, etc.). In logic, an argument is seen as ‘valid’ only when it takes a form
that makes it impossible for the assumptions (premise) to be true and the conclusion nevertheless to be false. It
is not required that a valid argument have premises that are actually true but to have premises that, IF they were
true, would guarantee the truth of the argument's conclusion. A formula is valid when it is true under every
possible interpretation; and an argument form (or schema) is valid if and only if every argument of that logical
form is valid (circular?). Viewed from this perspective, logic is not the real problem but whether each of the
component statements can be relied upon to be accurate descriptions of reality i.e. “true”.
2.1 CLASSICAL (FORMAL) LOGICS
Logic is generally considered formal when an argument is able to be translated into an artificial model of a
well-defined algebraic formalism. The two most studied formal logics are Aristotle’s syllogism and modern
symbolic logic. The form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and
symbolism of a well-structured, logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. Simply put,
formalising simply means translating English sentences into one of the artificial languages of logic with its own
definitions and abstract rules. The process of moving systematically from the initial elements (premises) to a
conclusion according to some of the rules is known as inference. Many statements in Natural Language are too
complex to be reduced to most artificial logics. It is needed because declarative (indicative) sentences of
ordinary (natural) language show a considerable variety of form and complexity that makes their use in
inference impractical. It requires, first, ignoring those grammatical features irrelevant to logic (such as gender
and declension, if the argument is in Latin), replacing conjunctions irrelevant to logic (such as "but") with the
limited set of logical connectives like ‘AND’, ‘OR’ and ‘NOT’ [i.e. conjunction, disjunction, negation] plus
replacing ambiguous, alternative quantitative expressions, like ("any", "every", etc.) with quantitative
expressions of a standard type (such as ‘ALL’, ‘SOME’ or ‘NONE’). Usually specific nouns are replaced (like
algebra) with arbitrary, capital letters: often P and Q (not X and Y). These substitutions (introduced by
Aristotle) mean that this technique is called “Symbolic Logic”; it is often split into Predicate and Propositional
logics. Even Predicate Logic has two historic forms: Grammatical and Predicate-Calculus (formal logic).
Aristotle was inspired to formalize his logic based on Plato’s method of defining concepts by their shared
characteristics; an accurate definition becomes a verbal expression of what is widely considered as “TRUE”, like
my claim that “I am the author because I wrote this sentence”.

In traditional grammar, a predicate is that part of a sentence or clause containing a verb that provides vital
information about the subject being discussed. As this is often the simplest form of communication, it was the
initial focus of Logic in the studies of the Greek and Latin languages. In English, the subject is an object:
usually a person or thing, represented in the sentence by a noun (or equivalent i.e. a pronoun). The key role of
the verb is to indicate the context of the subject that is important to communicate at this time because most
items can occur in innumerable contexts.
2.1.1 PREDICATE/SYLLOGISMS
Aristotle defined a syllogism as a discourse in which certain things being stated follow of necessity from their
being so. Declarative sentences in language have long been analyzed into two parts: a subject (S) and verbal
part describing one of its qualities, such as its properties or relationships, called a predicate (P). Simple
sentences are binary: they only relate two nouns. Aristotle introduced his logic for arguing from the general to
the particular (deduction) through the syllogism: a three part discourse in which a conclusion is drawn from two
prior related statements, called premises. The first or major premise references the generality as it contains the
implied conclusion about the specific generality, called the ‘middle term’ (M) and a minor premise with the
subject, S. The structure is: QUANTIFIER_A M is P, QUANTIFIER_B S is M; therefore QUANTIFIER_B S is P.
Here QUANTIFIER is one of the ‘spanning’ words, such as ‘all’, ‘some’, ‘every’, ‘none’.
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The second quantifier is usually omitted when S is a distinguishing NAME of a unique example or person. The
most famous example is: “All MEN are mortal, Socrates is a MAN so Socrates is mortal.” In this case,
Aristotle was safe using the dead Socrates, as his audience already knew that he was mortal, irrespective of any
major premise. The infamous counter-example is the Australian empirical discovery that “All SWANS are not
white”. The danger here is to make definitive statements about situations beyond the verifiable and present.
The two key words, ALL and NONE are tricky; only one exception is needed to refute the logic; a safer
conclusion is to replace the ALL word with SOME but then the argument loses much of its rhetorical power.
2.1.2.1 IS
Another much over-worked word is ‘IS’ (the verb ‘to be’) which can be used in multiple ways but is mainly
used to refer to a TYPE of object that by definition are described by the predicate P. Aristotle was aware of the
excessive usage of this word. The commonest form is called the ‘copulative’ (syntactically putting a ‘joining’
verb into a sentence) as in: “Jack is bald.” Another is the ‘existential’ as in: “There is a bird in my backyard.”
Logicians often use ‘class-membership’ to construct membership hierarchies, as in: “A cat is a mammal.”
Sometimes it’s shorthand for establishing a relationship: “This is my wife.” At other times, it establishes basic
materiality: “This ring is pure gold.” Mathematicians love identity: “Four is the square of two.” These multiple
usages seem to occur in many natural languages, so perhaps they reflect a basic style of human thinking. In
fact, the concept of Being (or existence) has long been at the heart of ontology, the core topic of metaphysics
and a foundation of philosophy. This simplifies logic (and mathematics) because Existence has only two values:
‘exist’ or ‘not exist’ that parallel the pair of logical opposites: ‘true’ or ‘false’. Such examples of pairs of
exclusive opposites have been called dialectical since Aristotle, as they imply argumentative disagreements.

The post-scholastics, like Descartes, limited their meaning of logic to the doctrine of the syllogism, which they
dismissed as only useful for disputations and not discovery, as it works best for well-defined Concepts. Kant
restored the full range in his “Introduction to Logic”, giving Aristotle full credit, although he decried that “logic
had not gained much since his time.” Kant saw the linkage to human psychology as this is needed for thinking
and knowing, especially for “how we ought to think”. The core of Kant’s disagreement with Aristotle lies in his
different views of the nature of the reality, especially the human mind, and the source of human knowledge
(epistemology). These still supply ongoing disputes about logic itself, such as the critiques of subject-predicate
logic are traceable to their rejection of the idea of substance (a very dangerous old concept underpinning much
theological thought).

Modern experts view this discipline as a ‘Science of Order’, applicable to the order of things as well as the
order of thought – a rival to metaphysics but it has been mathematicians who have most vigorously adopted it in
modern times; they view logic even as a branch of mathematics that has been used to give a solid basis to the
foundations of mathematics itself. In fact, Logic is most often found today in mathematics departments.
However, modern philosophers as diverse as Heidegger and Wittgenstein strongly disagree on its centrality to
thought itself. Indeed, it is so tightly coupled to linguistic usage that its ties to thought reflect the ancient
prejudice that only humans can think because they are the only ones with explicit social languages – this ignores
the much wider awareness of thought without explicit language usage in smart animals and infants. Ironically,
the success of formal methods (called ‘logistics’) for analyzing mathematics has raised deep questions about the
value of logic itself outside its specialists.
2.1.2.2 HAS
The other popular verb used often in the syllogism is the second most important verb in English: to HAVE that
indicates a part of an object (i.e. its necessary structure) or an intrinsic quality, such as the unchanging color of
snow. Thus, we can prove that IF: a) ALL kittens have mothers, this cat is a kitten; so this cat must have a
mother. b) ALL igloos are made of snow, this is an igloo; therefore this igloo is made of snow.
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2.1.2 PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC
This is the specialized form of Logic that deals with propositions, which are viewed as possible combinations of
constructs that are stated in a declarative form. Ideally, a declaration should be testable by objective, empirical
methods to judge whether it is true or not. Often, propositions are associations between abstract concepts that
are difficult to be validated directly. In modern Analytic Philosophy, propositions are considered to refer to
social (objective) Beliefs and personal intentions, so subjective beliefs are ruled out ab initio. It is not a
coincidence that many propositions are mathematical statements, like 2+3, nor that many logicians were first
mathematicians. Interestingly, agreed facts are also ruled inadmissible because they cannot be falsified. An
isolated proposition is sometimes called ‘simple’ or ‘atomic’ but when connected by logical-operators become
‘complex’. Some modern philosophers, like W. V. Quine maintain that too many propositions are ambiguous
so they should be replaced by simple sentences. The modern view of this central idea is “what is asserted when
a sentence is used to state that something is true or false.” It is often used for what is expressed by subordinate
clauses of complex sentences. The safest view is to simply regard propositions as a certain sort of sentence
used in a certain sort of way, particularly as it has been pointed out that statements are distinct from sentences
as not all sentences are used to make statements or that a given statement may be expressed through different
sentences. So, a basic Truth of logic (called Modus Ponens) is the basic Law of Inference in the following: IF
P is true then Q must be true. So, if you accept that P is true then you must accept that Q is true. It is this level
of triviality that has resulted in Logic sinking into obscurity unlike useful Arithmetic.
2.2 MODERN LOGICS
2.2.1 MULTI-VALUE
There are a many areas of human activity where choices must be made; it is always easier when only two
alternatives are being considered. The two commonest areas where this restriction has been formalized are law
and mathematics. In everyday relaxed conversation, nuanced or complex answers such as "maybe" or "only on
the weekend" are acceptable. In more focused situations such as a court of law or theorem-based mathematics
however it is deemed advantageous to frame questions so as to admit only a simple yes-or-no answer—is the
defendant guilty or not guilty, is the proposition true or false—and to disallow any other answer. However
much of a straitjacket this might prove in practice for the respondent, the principle of the simple yes-no question
has become a central feature of both judicial and mathematical logic, making two-valued logic deserving of
organization and study in its own right.
The classic logic discussed above is sometimes called ‘bivalent’ (two-valued); they are most readily understood
as dividing propositions into true and false propositions. Non-classical logics deliberately reject several of the
rules of Classical Logic. Humans do not always know whether an individual proposition is either true or false
but sometimes believes it describes a ‘possible’ situation or ‘missing’ (unknown), so then the ternary logic has
to describe all three possible results. These types of logic are limited to mathematical systems with a natural
language correspondence.
2.2.2 MODAL LOGIC
In natural languages, modality deals with the phenomenon that sub-parts of a sentence may have their semantics
modified by special verbs or modal particles. For example, in the simple statement: "We go to the games" can
be modified to give "We should go to the games", and "We can go to the games" and perhaps "We will go to the
games". More abstractly, we might say that modality affects the circumstances in which we take an assertion to
be satisfied.
2.2.3 TEMPORAL LOGIC
Temporal Logic is any system of rules and symbolism for representing, and reasoning about, propositions
qualified in terms of TIME (for example, “I am always hungry”; “I will eventually become hungry”; or “I will
be hungry until I eat something”). It is sometimes also used to refer to Tense-Logic, a modal-logic based
system of temporal logic. Consider the statement “I am hungry”. Though its meaning is constant in time, the
statement's truth value can vary in time, depending on history and circumstances.
 9
Sometimes it is true, and sometimes false, but never simultaneously true and false. In a temporal logic, a
statement can have a truth value that varies in time—in contrast with a timeless logic, which applies only to
statements whose truth values are constant in time. Aristotle was particularly concerned with future
possibilities, where he could recognized that we cannot now decide if a statement about a future event is true or
false, such as “there will be a sea battle tomorrow”. This remained the case until the 20th Century, when new
temporal binary operators, like SINCE and UNTIL were studied.
2.2.3 FUZZY-LOGIC
Logics such as Fuzzy Logic have since been devised with an infinite number of "degrees of truth", represented
by a so-called ‘real number’ (like 0.75) between 0 (definitely false) and 1(certainly true). These have proved
useful for handling ‘vague’ concepts, such as ‘bald’; situations without ‘sharp’ boundaries.
2.2.4 ANALYTICAL
For most of the western intellectual tradition (since the Ancient Greeks) there has only been one style of
philosophy that has relied heavily on the concepts of Plato and the logic of Aristotle. However, in the 20th
century there has been a major split arising with the failure of a ‘scientific-style’ of philosophy, known as
Positivism. Many in continental European have developed several schools of thought known as Continental
Philosophy that has diverged radically away from traditional logic. However, in the English-speaking areas,
such as the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, the majority of
university philosophy departments today identify themselves as "analytic" departments, as they pride
themselves on the continuity with the more traditional philosophy has remained heavily verbal, so it is called
Analytical Philosophy and it has remained deeply loyal to the Old Traditions.
3. ELEMENTS OF LOGIC
As logic is a subset of natural language, it consists of its own parts or elements. In each Natural Language,
there is a set of rules for valid combinations of the elements; the set of valid rules is known as its grammar.
3.1 LAWS OF THOUGHT
In establishing his logic, Aristotle believed he had identified three necessary rules (or Laws) that were needed to
create any system of logic. He was actually defining those features of statements (or propositions) that must be
present for us to use them in a rational style of speaking. A set of sentences can only be presented together as a
logical argument if each component sentences [any one might be labeled ‘A’] satisfies the following laws:

1) The Law of Identity: [A is A.] If any thing is classified as something then it must remain so. We cannot
change the classification of an Object while we are using several sentences to discuss it. For example, if we
start talking about MEN, we cannot then switch to introducing some feature about WOMEN that only applies to
them, to make some point about men.

2) The Law of Excluded Middle: [Either (A or Not A)]. We cannot reference both a property of an object and
its opposite property in the same argument, or at the same time. The two most common examples are Existence
and Truthfulness; so if we claim that some thing exists in some time period, then we cannot use its non-
existence during that same time period. More specifically, we must decide throughout the argument, whether
each and every one of our statements are either true or false but these are not allowed to vary from the start of
our argument until its conclusion.

3) The Law of Non-Contradiction: [Not (A and Not A)]. Nothing can exist AND not exist at the same time;
or, no statement can be simultaneously both TRUE and FALSE.

Actually, I have made these more applicable than Aristotle because his logic was supposed to be timeless; in
fact, he assumed there was a permanent, universal meaning to a concept – the mental equivalent of a word we
all use to define every object. Implicitly, he was setting up his own unchallengeable Dictionary of definitions.
 10
Implicitly in all this preamble, was that Aristotle was only talking about static THINGS, like pebbles. As he
deliberately avoided aspects of reality that were inherently changeable, like LIVING creatures, he was reducing
his Logic to the trivial. He hid this triviality by attempting to make universal claims about ALL examples. In
fact, most of his thinking was about Numbers, collections of simple static objects. We are now aware of so
much more today that limits the value of Classic Logic. For example, with modern medicine, a person’s gender
is no longer thought to be fixed, so the LAW of the ‘Excluded Middle’ of Either/Or when at different times
opposite results may apply; so after a successful ‘Sex-Change’ operation a person can have been both a Man
and a Woman or if the operation failed, sadly, maybe neither. This rare example illustrates that both
mathematics and logic rely on the LAW of Perfection [“Words are always fixed”] ; fortunately other cultures
(especially Asian) more readily assume both outcomes are possible.
3.1.1 OPERATORS
Mathematicians have hijacked logic and sometimes semantics. Comparable to arithmetic, with its dedicated
symbols to indicate addition (+), subtraction (−), multiplication (*) and division (/). They have used specialized
symbols for conveying binary connections, such as ∧ (or ∪) for AND, ∨ (or ∩) for OR and → (or ∩ ) for IF ...
THEN ... . The NOT (or negation) operator is denoted by ¬ corresponding to the (unary) minus sign (−).
3.1.2 GENERALIZATION
One of the major motivations in developing logic was the urge to generalize from limited examples. It can be a
very powerful statement when we say it applies to all examples (or None of them), without exception, so that
when we discover a new example of a well understood object then we can be confident about this one also has
the general property. This has been a feature in logic from its very beginning, so that it is not a surprise for us to
discover that the originators of modern (Symbolic) logic would develop a special short-hand symbol to denote
this; it is the inverted letter A, so the phrase All dogs can be symbolized as ∀(dog). A true logical proposition
might then be:
∀(mammal) has one mother.

Another useful feature of logic is to propose a statement that is sometimes true but perhaps not always. When
we are trying to describe some such property Q of a type (kind) of Object K, where we know for sure that there
is at least one type of K that exhibits the property Q, then logicians can use the reverse E symbol (alluding to
exist); so if we wanted to propose that there is at least one person who is a billionaire, we can write it (using
logical short-hand) as: ∃(person) is.a Billionaire.

This notation allows some old propositions, originating with Aristotle, to be restated about a sample S of objects
being classified by a generalization G: historically, each form was assigned its own basic Letter identification:
A: ∀(S) is G. “All S is a G”.
E: ¬ (∀(S) is G). “No S is a G”.
I: ∃(S) is G. “Some S is a G”.
O: ¬ (∃(S) is G). “Some S is not a G”.

In these generalized forms, the symbol S above is not the name of a specific example, but represents each and
every example, so it is called a variable (in analogy with algebra, where a general symbol, like X, stands for any
number. In contrast to algebra, where the objects are understood to be numbers, here they may represent any
real existent. The totality of terms from which it may select its meaning is called its ‘Range of Significance’.
‘∃(x)’ is a perfect example of symbology hiding substance; in some usages it is verbalized ‘there exists some’
without any ontological justification for the meaning of existence itself or whether there really exists an x or
whether it is just a verbal trick to slip in a metaphysical claim, like that “numbers are real and exist”. It is quite
astonishing to discover there are many scientists today who cannot distinguish between Reality and a Fiction.
 11
3.2 OBJECTS
Much logic was designed to work with similar objects, defined by shared properties so that analysis of just the
group can then be applied to the elements of the group.
3.2.1 SETS
A central concept of SET theory is membership. An organization may permit multiple degrees of membership,
such as novice, associate and full. With sets however an element is either in or out. The candidates for
membership in a set work just like the wires in a digital computer: each candidate is either a member or a non-
member, just as each wire is either high or low.
3.2.2 CLASSES
A class is a collection of sets (sometimes called a set of sets or similar mathematical objects) that can be
unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share. In a narrower sense, one speaks of a class
logic only if classes are described by a property of their elements. The detailed analysis of sets (for example, by
Russell) exposed several contradictions that were glossed over by calling them paradoxes. This was traced to
the general idea of a Set including itself ; excluding this possibility resulted in the idea of a Class. When all the
objects under consideration qualify as classes, then their study is called Class-Logic. Outside of formal set
theory, the word ‘class’ is sometimes used synonymously with ‘set’. This usage dates from a historical period
when classes and sets were not widely distinguished as they are in modern set-theoretic terminology. Many
discussions of ‘classes’ in the 19th century and earlier are really referring to sets, or perhaps to a more
ambiguous concept. Modern research effectively limits sets to the study of Numbers.

A specific proposition always describes a certain subject, which could be pointed out and given a proper-name.
Such a subject, whether it be a specific person, place, thing or what-not (‘object’) is termed an individual. In
contrast, completely general propositions never mention individuals. They may apply to specific subjects when
the proposition is illustrated by describing a specific instance of a generality. What a general proposition does
mention is a member (or members) of a certain class. Thus, class-membership is the bridge between logic and
reality. For hundreds of years this was simply assumed to describe a part of a larger whole. In English this is
traceable to the simple word ‘IS’; it was the Italian mathematician and logician Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932)
who emphasized this difference and symbolized IS-A (member) by the special symbol letter ∈. A Class implies
all its members, like mankind, without having to identify each individual member, otherwise the term would
imply a collection that changed with every birth and death. This distinction was vital to sharpening the idea (or
concept) of a concept that is usually achieved by an agreed standard definition (the social value of Dictionaries).
Thus, some logicians define a ‘class’ as a collection of all those examples (and only to those) which a given
concept applies. Traditionally, this was called the intension of a concept or definition but the totality of real
examples (existents) are called its extension. The class is not a fixed collection; in logic it is usually defined by
its propositional or its abstract form, not by its specific members. It is very useful to always distinguish these
two meanings; I refer to concrete examples of reality whose existence is independent of all others as ‘Existents’
while these abstract exemplars need to be called only ‘Concepts’. The problem is compounded because most
non-mathematical introductions to Class-Logic use real existents to appeal to most people’s natural intuitions
based on real exemplars, leading to their own personal idea of a concept that is often called a ‘Conception’.
Good thinking requires clear and distinct terminology. In spite of all these disclaimers, logicians do not hesitate
to talk about Sub-Classes: logical but not physical parts. However, they do not hesitate to use real exemplars to
illustrate their ideas; thus, the class ‘sheep’ may be divided into black-sheep and white-sheep. This process can
continue with these sub-divisions until we arrive at the smallest extreme: the Unit-Class that (by definition) can
only have one member. The law recognizes this distinction when it admits that some professionals (e.g.
dentists) can incorporate as a one-man, limited-liability company. Mathematicians many years ago recognized
the utility of the zero concept; their logician-cousins admit a similar idea with their inclusion of the Null-Class
with no members; its complement is the Universal-Class implying everything. When we define a class as all
examples in a bounded space, directly in front of the participants, then logic becomes totally trivial.
 12
4. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This section will introduce some ideas that criticize major ideas implicit in the discussions of logic that usually
remain unstated i.e. assumptions that escape critical analysis because they never appear explicitly in standard
presentations. Several of these assumptions were simply adopted when philosophy separated from its earlier,
religious roots.
4.1 PRESUPPOSITIONS
Presuppositions are ideas taken for granted before any thinking; often they are widely shared cultural opinions.
The claim for logic is that natural languages are too ambiguous to be analyzed rationally; by this, they mean that
the discursive style of mathematics cannot be readily mapped to normal argumentation, so a subset: called
Logic must be developed. Key to all spoken communication is to communicate shared (objective) meanings (or
Semantics) about the world. A necessary shared (and often unstated assumption) is that we are all describing
the same reality leading to the idea we casually call Truth. The implied metaphysics is that the world consists
of distinct objects that maintain their properties forever and do not overlap (separate hierarchies). As humans
are seen as agents of activity in the world then the consequence (or effects) are naturally linked to their sources.
Most cultures, including the classic Greeks, generalized this relationship to many natural sources, calling them
all examples of the abstraction, we have come to call ‘Causation’.
4.2 PERFECTION
The idea of Perfection arose as one of the principal characteristics of God to contrast with the flaws and finitude
of human beings, so it implies Everything (or completeness), zero flaws, ultimate value (or excellence). So, we
are not surprised to discover that the first Western efforts at abstract thinking, namely mathematics, would try to
reach these supreme features. Thus, these cult masters of the unfettered imagination could see no end to the
sequence of countable numbers or the extent of a straight line; so the idea of Eternity seemed unchallengeable.
Remember, the logicians only need a definition; they do not need to identify all examples of a concept. In fact,
this is why so much attention was applied to the circle (and the sphere – its solid extension); they were not only
endless but also flawless; the fact there are no real examples of these shapes in Nature never bothered them.
Ironically, the English word traces its roots to the Latin word ‘perficio’ meaning to finish. Aristotle discussed
this idea (‘teleos’) for which he offered two complementary meanings:
1) that which is so good that nothing of the kind could be better;
2) that which attained its purpose.
Physicists have also been guilty of adopting perfection in some of their basic ideas; thus, Einstein’s theory of
Relativity was explicitly constructed the idea of Perfect-Rigid-Bodies, where both ends of such a rod would
move exactly at the same time.
4.2.2 INFINITY:TIMELESSNESS
Again, it seems inevitable that the classic Greek philosophers would prefer to abolish all change, so that their
definitions would be eternal: the same for all time. It was not a coincidence that they emphasized simple nouns
(only 4 cases, each with a singular and plural form) because Greek had almost 200 ways to cover time when
they used verbs. Thus, they (like English) could readily nominalize verbal actions into noun-forms using the
gerund form (we simply add the ‘ing’ ending, so to kill becomes killing). Ironically, it is impossible to define a
noun with using a verb that must be understood through its gerund form; so “murder = unlawful killing”.
4.2.3 CAUSALITY
In general, a process has several causes (or causal factors) and because of human memory are always assumed
to only lie in the past. This view is so widespread that it is implicit in the structure of most languages and also
smuggled into logic. Many see this as universal, so every thing must have a cause; this leads to the idea that
God is the Ultimate (First) cause. The theory that everything has a cause leads to the idea of Determinism.
 13
4.2.4 PROOF
Modeling itself on Euclid’s geometry, Logic is designed to take a student along a series of steps to derive an
incontestable “proof”. This discursive style of thinking defines rationality – in contrast to Intuition that appeals
to many because all the detailed steps are omitted: the conclusion is simply presented and one either “gets it” or
not. This is so widespread, people who rely on Intuition need not apologize for “not being rational”. In contrast,
logicians are proud that that the conclusion is “derived” from pre-existing “rules of thought”. Unfortunately,
too many examples of desired conclusions do not readily translate from Natural Languages, where we often say:
“If A then B”. This has become so weak, that we now must precede our presentation with the explicit proviso
that: “If you grant that A is true, then B.” Modern logic has called this restriction “Relevant Logic” that ties the
parts of the argument tightly together, so that we exclude examples like: “If the moon is cheesy, then 2+2=5.”
Further, the conclusion may already be accepted as true, so the premise is irrelevant, as in: If man lands on the
moon, then you will die.” This has resulted in Classical Logic evolving to Formal Logic, wherein the
application of the Rules of Logic are determined only by the shape of the symbols, like an algebra of arbitrary
symbols and not by the meaning of the symbols. In fact, this reduces logic to trivial grammar of using the
simple connections (And, Or, Not).
4.2.5 INFERENCE
Webster’s Dictionary defines the verb ‘to implicate’ to show a connection between two statements but defines
the verb ‘to infer’ to arrive at a conclusion by reasoning from known facts but now logic has had to be more
rigorous (honest?) as they still want to convince others of their conclusions by using an artificial rule called
“Material Implication” using the standard symbology (A ⊃ B) but is still verbalized as: “If A then B ” but this
can be true or false. Technically, the logical rule is as close to gobble-degook as one can imagine, for it claims
that the proposition that: ‘P implies Q’ can be replaced by the combination: ‘not-P or Q’. Just try this with two
normal but semantically related sentences for P and Q. However, new users of so-called Truth-Tables must be
warned because usually “material implication” will be slipped in some place because: “It is the most prominent
operation in logical calculus because it permits inference.” The trick is to challenge the teacher to give a
realistic and not obvious example. The heart of this major problem is that ordinary reasoning deals with
conveying meanings about (implied) real situations but logic is only a calculus for manipulating logical-
propositions that simply are examples of carriers of binary, opposite values: true/false. This leads to two
infamous “material paradoxes”, where: “A true proposition is implied by any proposition” and “A false
proposition implies any proposition.” In fact, Langer states explicitly [p. 284] that: “The laws of logic must be
accepted before any logical calculus can be used.”
4.3 THEOREMS and VALIDITY
Just like manipulating numbers in arithmetic only results in other numbers, so there can be no new knowledge
generated by the propositional calculus; as Langer admits: “a proposition cannot be deduced from anything but
another proposition.” But, even then, like geometry, logic is no stronger than the initial assumptions (grandly
called “axioms”) whose ‘truth’ is vouched for when we accept it intuitively, demonstrating that ultimately
rationality is grounded in experience. Furthermore, Langer says: “the self-evidence of any proposition is a very
questionable affair. The power to doubt familiar propositions is relative to one’s logical imagination (?) and to
the force of verbal and mental habits.” – this explains the efforts made to ‘educate’ society’s intellectual elites
when young; she also warns, using the history of science: “What is intuitively accepted by all people may turn
out to be false.” This leads to the trumpeted feature of ‘logical proofs’ or ‘theorems’ where resulting
propositions are seen as ‘proved’ as long as the prior propositions are “granted” or previously proved.
4.4 SEMANTICS
This is the most important use of language: to convey significant meaning from one human mind to another.
This is why we speak to each other; thinking (inside our own head) is only a secondary function, as we can
know much without inner verbalizations, like visual memories. However, the validity of an argument depends
both on the meaning of the sentences used and the coherence of them being combined together (Logic).
 14
Few logicians apply their critical analysis to the mapping between words and reality: the metaphysical
speciality called epistemology. Semantics is the frequent usage in ordinary speech of suggesting associations
with other ideas, called a connotation. Since this is often subjective, involving one’s personal memories or
prototypes, it can be the word’s private extension. This is usually an addition to its denotation (the standard or
explicit, dictionary meaning in a culture); actually, in logic itself, denotation is sometimes called intension: the
action of linking it to the name of the class that defines it. In many cultures, there are often strong traditions to
avoid pejorative or negative connotations in most social situations; in fact, the use of euphemisms is an
acceptable technique for using these negative associations. For example, the ‘heart’ symbol (as in standard
playing cards) is a representation of a cartoon heart but its connotation is a symbol of love and affection. So,
semantics is the verbal (or graphic symbol) network needed for communicating within a linguistic culture. The
complement of semantics in language is syntax (or grammar), which are the Rules for Sequencing the Parts of
Speech but it is humorously possible to create grammatically correct sentences where the meanings of the words
are contradictory or even nonsense.

The omission of TIME certainly leads to simplicity in the timeless logical “equations” but they are only ‘valid’
for some foundational assumptions of what are the “objects of thought” symbolized by these algebraic letters,
so a proposition about two distinct classes assumes that the equation can be written in any order
(“commutation”), like the addition of simple ‘things’ [such as pebbles], as in: A + B = B + A. However, if the
‘objects’ are actually events or actions then, for example: “eating must precede dying” when time is being
considered, so symbolizing these events as E(t1) and D(t2) then: E(t1) < D(t2) for time t1 before time t2; but not
the opposite times.
4.5 TRUTH
The etymology of the English word True alludes to “faithful, loyal, reliable, etc.” indicating its central role in
human relationships, where one can expect an honest use of language. Webster’s Dictionary also says that
“actual and real” are often used as synonyms of ‘true’, implying correspondence with a fact or historical event
but it also says that it is also used to indicate conformity with an accepted standard or definition. Ironically,
most human activities depend upon this concept but few people could offer a powerful definition, so they rely
on an intuitive understanding of this idea. To many educated people, truth is viewed as the correspondence of a
linguistic statement to an independent (objective?) reality: the “Correspondence Theory of Truth”. This idea
gets very murky when it is qualified into relative or absolute truth. Minimally, it implies agreement between the
participants in the discourse. Aristotle said that truth is the conformity of the intellects and things.
4.5.1 LOGICAL TRUTH
One of the major uses of formal logic is to propagate true/false values though a series of related propositions.
The hope was that this technique would be as systematic as Euclid’s geometric proofs. So much so, some logic
experts limit this approach to results derived from a formal logical system, when they claim the results are
‘logically necessary’. Some linguistic truths are simply tautologies as in ‘No bachelors are married.’ The most
powerful magic ‘trick’ is to casually introduce the word ‘Truth’ into expositions on logic, whereas in a more
honest presentation (as by Langer in her third chapter), the idea of “Truth-Value” is introduced to reflect that
when a speaker says something about the world they may be mistaken – or worse, lying; i.e. the sentence may
be viewed as “true” or “false” if we interpret the meaning in terms of the real world. The Game of Logic is to
see how far we can link such propositions together, so that when we know certain components are ‘true’ then
see if the conclusions of the whole set are true or not; the final result is called its “truth-value”, it is like trying
to solve a simple problem in algebra when we are told the result must only be one or zero; in multiple choice
situations (most of reality) this restriction is not very helpful. The weakness of this game is to know how
truthful are the claims that key parts are indeed true or not. Logic does very little to help with this fundamental
problem although this is what the common man expects of so-called logic and rationality. Another huge
problem with logic is that the time of the statements is not provided; they are supposed to be always the case;
unfortunately, science itself follows in this mathematical style of simplification: an equation (like E=mc2) is
assumed to be always true.
 15
Experience shows us that context almost always plays an important role in life and there are few situations
that remain unchanged over extended time frames. Thus, adding one ice-cube to a stove-top a minute or so
after a first one was placed there is supposed to result in two ice-cubes being found there soon after; since we all
know that: “one plus one equals two”; this will not be the case if the stove-top is very hot.

Although logic makes many claims that are concerned about truth and falsity, the reality in Logic is that these
are two complementary values and almost nothing to do with the concept of Truth that most people work with:
implicitly a statement that “accurately reflects concrete reality”. As Langer confesses halfway into her book: “For
the truth of postulates, there is no logical guarantee. There is no difference between a proposition that
expresses an actual state of affairs in the world and one that expresses merely a conceivable state; no formal
distinction between factual and fictional premises.” This astonishing view shows why logicians are not called
as legal experts in criminal trials. This distinction is called by these Masters of Rationality ‘logical certainty’ or
“validity”. These admissions mean that ordinary people should be extremely skeptical when confronted by
clever professors pushing their own views under the disguise that “it’s just logical”.
4.5.2 SEMANTIC TRUTH
Truth is a necessary metalinguistic concept to justify the use of language as a realistic activity between humans.
If there were no connection with reality then we might as well spend our time singing or other aesthetic activity.
Unfortunately, we now realize how difficult it is to demonstrate the semantic truthfulness of a statement. Maybe
it is an asymptotic concept, like the Absolute Zero of temperature: a situation we can get closer to over time but
actually impossible to reach. Conventionally, speakers in a conversation assume their companion is speaking
the truth, as best they know it. Indeed, even we ourselves may not know when we are speaking the truth but we
do know when we are lying. However, even the most honest speaker may be let down by his knowledge or
even memory; in other words, every spoken proposition, when understood, may be viewed as “true” or “false”
if we interpret the meaning in terms of the real world. The Game of Logic is to see how far we can link such
propositions together, so that when we know certain components are ‘true’ then see if the conclusions of the
whole set are true or not; the final result is called its “truth-value”.
4.5.3 PRAGMATIC TRUTH
The American philosophers at the end of the nineteenth century (such as Charles Peirce, William James, John
Dewey) developed their philosophy of Pragmatism, including their own view of Truth as statements that work
out to be ‘useful’ for those who believe in them; their ideas usually included references to actions, future
experiences, etc. Peirce defined truth as the ultimate outcome of inquiry by a ‘community of investigators’: an
outcome of settled ‘habits of action’. James saw truths as leading to consistency, stability and ongoing human
discourse. Dewey identified truth with the agreed solution to a problem, so that hesitancy to act has been
eliminated. Ironically, this useful pragmatic approach is similar to the views of the Sophists – Plato’s Athenian
rivals. However, too many philosophers are still committed to Aristotle’s ideas of substance, so they will still
believe that their sentences, like “What is truth?” have meaningful answers. In my view, one of the best tests of
a true belief is whether the holder of such would ‘bet their life on it’. Fortunately, many truth claims are linked
to scientific theories and historical events; which have their specialists to assess the validity of such statements.
It is not sufficient to believe only scientific truth as history shows these often change at a later date. Scientists,
at least can rely on acceptable experiments; as Physicist Richard Feynman wrote: “if a theory disagrees with
experiment, it is wrong.” Establishing the facts of a historical event are very difficult to determine as any
experienced detective will confirm: a real problem for Justice. The irony of logic, present since its invention by
Aristotle and continued through the vanity project of Logistics, is that has always tried to understand the nature
of relationships (best represented in natural language by verbs) but logicians have persistently focused on the
singular idea appearing as nouns, with the only relation covered being that of membership in a conceptual class
or simple inclusion in its geometric analogy exhibited in two-dimensional Venn Diagrams of overlapping
circles. Few will be convinced by Langer that this huge effort is justified because it only shows the (claimed)
pattern of class-relationships such as conjunction (AND) and disjunction (OR) alternatively total/partial
inclusions or even over-lapping when presented diagrammatically.
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4.6 TRANSLATION and ART
The challenge for logic is not to manipulate its symbols but to translate statements in Natural Language into one
of the standard structures of ‘Symbolic Logic’.

A famous paradox is the following syllogism: “Man is a species; Socrates is a man, so Socrates is a species.”

The problem here is that most people want to use language to communicate meaning (semantics) but logic is
purely formal (syntax). Worse, people have a basic expectation about the meaning of TRUTH, as an accurate
representation of reality but this is not the usage of this word in logic, where it represents a binary-valued
situation; indeed, Boole explicitly mapped this to the two basic values of arithmetic: one and zero. This reflects
the assumption that truth-conditions determine meaning. Many situations deviate from this classic binary
choice. For example, most cultures have classified people as either male or female but science has shown there
are rare individuals who possess both an X- and Y-sex chromosome, so biology trumps culture. Even
philosophers have had to admit disappointment, like when Russell once claimed that “Most metaphysical errors
can be traced to bad grammar.” He became a lot wiser as he aged. Ironically, Plato and Aristotle’s obsession
was with BEING but Kant himself stated that “Existence is not a predicate.” Ultimately, we need the idea of
truth to promote our individual and collective survival, within a communicating community.

The power of verbal imagination is made manifest in fiction and poetry, where unreal situations can be
described with exactly the same language as is used in our attempts to describe reality accurately. In a mature
literature, there develops conventions that indicate that the narrative is purely fictitious; these are usually called
figures-of-speech or ‘figurative’ idioms or tropes; no one would expect to be deafened to read some “screaming
headlines” in a newspaper. Our reality attempts are limited to the ‘literal’ use of language, where every word
had to be used in its standard or conventional manner.

These problems become severe when we try to translate communications across different languages and
cultures; some concepts are common in one and unused in another; a common example is the German Zeitgeist:
a literal translation would be ‘Time Spirit’ but native Germans would intuit its associations to the ‘Spirit of the
Age’, the feeling or mood of an Age. The most difficult challenge is to translate poetry and continue to convey
the emotional feelings of the poem, especially where the original used unique metaphors and analogies. These
well-known difficulties should alert people to the exaggerated claims of ‘Automated Translation’; at best, these
computer programs can offer the smart user the ‘gist’ of the message. An early version became a computer
joke, when the English phrase: “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” was first translated into Russian and
then translated back into English; it appeared as: “The vodka is fresh but its alcohol content is low.” Even in
literal translations, it is always important to appreciate the context of the message because the broader
perspective can critically determine the meaning. Good translation is more an art than a science if ambiguities
in the source text are introduced by that language’s grammatical and lexical subtleties. Interestingly, the
weaknesses of pure computer translation (unaided by human expertise) are those of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
itself: the failure to grasp the nuances of meaning and cultural connotation.
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4.6 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
Western intellectuals, beginning with the Old Greeks, have flattered themselves with the belief that humans are
logical animals, naturally capable of rational thought. Until the explosion of interest in psychology and neuro-
science, this unjustified belief has lain at the core of our civilization. Although these areas were not invented to
criticize Logic, many of their empirical findings lead us to seriously challenge this old belief. Since logic was
developed as an aid to human communications, it reinforces the actual behavior of people when they do
communicate with each; especially to resolve disagreements. This has been the unexpected value of findings in
Social Psychology. Major findings here may be classified under the following headings:

• Conformity
As social animals, we see such strong evidence among many people to ‘fit in’ with their group.
In the 1950s, psychologists conducted various experiments and found that people would
knowingly lie about their private responses to perceptions being made in a group setting. Later,
they confessed that they had not wanted to embarrass themselves or damage the experiment’s
nominal aim; some felt the test was too easy, so they doubted themselves. This observation has
been strengthened in institutional organizations where members value their ongoing association;
here this social pressure to conform has been labeled “Group-Think”. In many situations,
conformity is enhanced to agree with the views of a charismatic leader.
• Authority
When a protagonist has achieved a degree of social success, such as reaching a leadership level,
others will credit this ‘winner’ with authority in the subject in dispute whether the leader has
shown expertise or competence outside their own speciality; this is known as the ‘Halo Effect’.
What is truly astonishing is that the disputant need only be ‘Good-Looking’ to induce agreement.
• Culture
These two effects often converge in the social/political domain, where the accepted beliefs are
simply accepted in toto.
• Confirmation Bias
Today, especially with the Internet, we are seeing increasing evidence of Confirmation-Bias,
where people seek out evidence that reinforces their previously held beliefs and ignoring/denying
any facts or evidence that might challenge or, especially reverse, their belief.
5. SUMMARY
5.1 ARGUMENTATION
Even professional philosophers now admit that Logic is primarily the study of rational argumentation, while
many will still claim that it is the core of Rational Thinking, rather than a branch of specialized mathematics.
The irony of logic, present since its invention by Aristotle and continued through the vanity project of Logistics,
is that it has always tried to understand the nature of relationships (best represented in natural language by
verbs) but have persistently focused on the singular idea appearing as nouns, with the only relation covered
being that of membership in a conceptual class or simple inclusion in its geometric analogy exhibited in two-
dimensional Venn Diagrams of overlapping circles. Few will be convinced by Langer that this huge effort is
justified because it only shows the (claimed) pattern of class-relationships such as conjunction (AND) and
disjunction (OR) alternatively total/partial inclusions or even over-lapping when presented diagrammatically.

As the study of argument is of clear importance to the reasons that we hold things to be true, logic is of essential
importance to rationality. Here we can agree with the definition of logic to be “the systematic study of the
form of arguments”; the reasoning behind argument is of several sorts, but only some of these arguments fall
under the aegis of logic proper. The aim in winning an argument (one hopes) is that both sides will agree on the
point of issue that has been resolved by peaceful, discursive speaking to one another (‘Good Reasoning’).
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Tragically, this focus on argumentation continues the ancient warrior belief in competition and winning.
This has resulted in the modern world of deep disagreements with all opponents possessing mighty weapons of
mass destruction. This is not a sustainable model for humanity. A good New Direction will be to focus on
common agreements by reducing argumentation and its reliance on logic.
5.2 EXCESSIVE GENERALIZATION
As a general rule of thumb (for regular folk): be very suspicious of intellectuals who fail to provide any real
examples of their vague concepts; the world really does consist of particulars and not their “universals”.
Science has progressed more from improvements in technology (like microscopes) rather than the (mistaken)
opposite view. We are a technologically successful society; certainly not a philosophically successful society.
5.3 JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS
We agree to view logic as the Art of Rational Disagreement, peacefully conducted using arguments involving
coherent sentences with the final one being the conclusion. We accept the modest proposal that a good method
generates a valid conclusion from the earlier sentences (premises), not that we have arrived at the Truth. We
have seen above that conclusions result from two kinds of arguments: deductive and inductive. It is only
deductive reasoning that concerns the logical consequences of given premises and is the form of reasoning most
closely connected to logic, from the General to the Particular, but this excludes most of what is called informal
logic from the discipline. The basic problem with deduction is to have sufficient confidence in the accuracy of
the premises; this requires another round of deduction, leading to a never-ending quest for definitive premises.
Even logicians lead finite lives, so they have agreed to the following Game Rules: if we assume that all the
premises are true then the conclusion is valid, because we are just following the formal rules of the logic game.

Fortunately, deductive logic is not the only form of human systematic inquiry into the nature of reality. The
success of science has shown that Induction, deriving General conclusions from a limited sample of particular
examples can often suggest a regularization of our understanding of a general situation. This is more than
adequate for most humans, who have not been brain-washed into the necessity of ‘Geometric Proof’. No, we
cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow (or any other day in the Earth’s future) but it would still be quite
unreasonable to assume that it will not. Obviously, induction implies probabilities but this is stronger than the
delusion of certainty.
5.4 INFORMAL LOGIC and FALLACIES
It is more than significant that Aristotle (the ‘Father of Logic’) devoted more than half of his book (‘Organon’)
on treating inference as it occurs in an informal setting since his objective was to help his students become
more powerful rhetoricians in persuading their fellow citizens in a course of action. In the investigation of
common modes of argumentation, several types of errors in reasoning have been identified: these are called
Fallacies.

The commonest fallacy is called a ‘Circular Argument’ when one of the premises is the conclusion itself, often
using a different set of words; an historic example to justify: “Why gold is more valuable than silver?” just
“because it is”. This fallacy is generically called ‘Begging the Question’ because it does not introduce
independent reasons. Lawyers are criticized by a judge when they ask a ‘Leading Question’ of a witness to
provide the information they want made part of the trial evidence. A related fallacy is trying to introduce a
‘Misleading Distinction’, when a word is introduced with a different association; the following example
illustrates false logic by using the same word ‘table’ with two different meanings to include the mathematical
array of numbers; thus: “Tables are furniture and my statistics book is filled with tables, therefore my statistics
book is all about furniture.”

Another common fallacy exploits a variant of Group-Think by including the phrase: “We all know that ...”.
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5.5 FORMAL LOGIC
Formal logic began, as we saw, with Aristotle’s division of simple sentences into a topic, called the ‘subject’,
and a part (the ‘predicate’) about its properties or relationships, described by a verb; sometimes called category
statements. However, Greek verbs were even more complex than ours with dozens of different forms, so
Aristotle limited his analysis to just the Class-Membership relation (the verb ‘IS-A’) or Part-Ownership (the
verb ‘HAVE’). All the richness of other relationships are simplified down to referencing another noun. These
simple sentences are made much more impressive by claiming that ALL/SOME/NONE members share a
property; the problem arises because our knowledge of such is limited to a finite sample, like all the examples in
front of us now: obvious but not so impressive. Generalizations to all possible examples introduce hypothetical
possibilities but evidence of reality requires experiential evidence, as scientists understand. These propositional
transformations were complemented by the special prefix NOT that reversed a truth-value.

The late 19th century mathematicians extended formal logic, with a symbology reminiscent of algebra, by
working with special sentences (called propositions) that were deliberately called upon to possess only two
possible and opposite values, they misleadingly called True and False. They then created some rules for
combining pairs of these propositions through ordinary conjunctions such as AND/OR. There are no problems
with these but they wanted to impress by adding deduction by including IF THEN but this is not the general
form used in natural language but a highly specialized form, called Material Implication that can be bizarre.
All of these rules are usually presented in the form of “Truth-Tables” that enhances the message to be learnt.

The major problem with all these Logical-Rules is simply that: they are only rules or syntax; they are only ways
of symbol manipulation without meaning or semantics. Evidentially, people turn to languages to communicate
meanings so formal logic reverts to just Head-Games for certain specialist mathematicians. These specialists
have been so desperate to show that their imaginative creations have some relevance to the real world they point
to Euclidean Geometry: the first example of ‘perfect’ definitions (e.g. circles) so they could construct stepwise
sequences of so-called “proofs”. What proves ultimately embarrassing is that no such perfect objects have ever
been found; worse, in the 19th century, alternative geometries were invented that were as consistent as Euclid’s.
This invention shook mathematics to its core: What was true? Where is Certainty? Is it all a Game? – YES.

We predict a return to Leibniz’s biological approach when the current mathematically-based logic has finally
exhausted its current fashionable dominance.
6. CONCLUSIONS
Philosophers have done an injustice with respect to the subject of Logic. With their excessive respect for the
words of their predecessors, they have failed to exercise their critical intelligence that they claim to possess in
examining this foundational topic in philosophy. Rather than expose its flaws, as has been attempted herein,
they have simply acted as Curators in the ‘Museums of the Minds’ in many western universities and bask in the
glow of the undeserved respect that has been inculcated in the general public with respect to Logic that should
be viewed as no more than an esoteric branch of mathematics, like partial differential equations. Formal Logic
has been viewed as philosophy’s equivalent of calculus: a complex, abstract topic that is hard to grasp but
conveys the impression that its roots are stronger than they are; somewhat like the reliance on calculus to justify
the validity of Newtonian physics. One can build on both subjects from empirical investigations without the
need to “Win Arguments” – a difficult temptations for well-educated intellectuals.

Philosophers appear to cling too desperately to formal logic even though we have shown its many weaknesses.
Perhaps this loyalty is based on their shared use of language: both appeal to masters of the verbal skills but it is
significant that many lawyers study philosophy as part of their higher education, few are attracted to the use of
logic in their legal pleadings. It certainly enhances their mutual credibility to make claims about Truth and the
global applicability of their subjects but few, outside of philosophy, have dug deep into their roots, so their
claims have remained mainly unchallenged in the last 2000 years of western civilization.
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This was one of the main motivations for this essay; its author has expended much effort in the study of both
subjects and has come away deeply disappointed with the results. Hopefully, this essay will prevent many
others from this fruitless investigation.

So, we come to a re-assuring conclusion: Can one be rational without using/knowing Logic? The answer is
YES.