THE BASICS OF PHILOSOPHY

Introduction

Logic (from the Greek "logos", which has a variety of

meanings including word, thought, idea, argument,
account, reason or principle) is the study of reasoning,
or the study of the principles and criteria of valid
inference and demonstration. It attempts to
distinguish good reasoning from bad reasoning.

Aristotle defined logic as "new and necessary

reasoning", "new" because it allows us to learn what
we do not know, and "necessary" because its
conclusions are inescapable. It asks questions like
"What is correct reasoning?", "What distinguishes a
good argument from a bad one?", "How can we detect
a fallacy in reasoning?"

Logic investigates and classifies the structure

of statements and arguments, both through the study
of formal systems of inference and through the study
of arguments in natural language. It deals only
with propositions (declarative sentences, used to make
an assertion, as opposed to questions, commands or
sentences expressing wishes) that are capable of
being true and false. It is not concerned with
the psychological processes connected with thought, or
with emotions, images and the like. It covers core
topics such as the study of fallacies and paradoxes, as
well as specialized analysis of reasoning
using probability and arguments
involving causality and argumentation theory.

Logical systems should have three

things: consistency (which means that none of the
theorems of the system contradict one
another); soundness (which means that the system's
rules of proof will never allow a false inference from a
true premise); and completeness (which means that
there are no true sentences in the system that cannot,
at least in principle, be proved in the system).

History of Logic

In Ancient India, the "Nasadiya Sukta" of the Rig

Veda contains various logical divisions that were later
recast formally as the four circles of catuskoti: "A",
"not A", "A and not A" and "not A and not not A".
The Nyaya school of Indian philosophical speculation
is based on texts known as the "Nyaya
Sutras" of Aksapada Gautama from around the 2nd
Century B.C., and its methodology of inference is
based on a system of logic (involving a combination
of induction and deduction by moving from particular
to particular via generality) that subsequently has been
adopted by the majority of the other Indian schools.

But modern logic descends mainly from the Ancient

Greek tradition. Both Plato and Aristotle conceived of
logic as the study of argument and from a concern
with the correctness
of argumentation. Aristotle produced six works on
logic, known collectively as the "Organon", the first of
these, the "Prior Analytics", being the first explicit
work in formal logic.

Aristotle espoused two principles of great importance

in logic, the Law of Excluded Middle (that every
statement is either true or false) and the Law of Non-
Contradiction (confusingly, also known as the Law of
Contradiction, that no statement is both true and
false). He is perhaps most famous for introducing
the syllogism (or term logic) (see the section on
Deductive Logic below). His followers, known as
the Peripatetics, further refined his work on logic.

In medieval times, Aristotelian logic (or dialectics) was

studied, along with grammar and rhetoric, as one of
the three main strands of the trivium, the foundation
of a medieval liberal arts education.

Logic in Islamic philosophy also contributed to the

development of modern logic, especially the
development of Avicennian logic (which was
responsible for the introduction of the hypothetical
syllogism, temporal logic, modal logic and inductive
logic) as an alternative to Aristotelian logic.

In the 18th Century, Immanuel Kant argued that logic

should be conceived as the science of judgment, so
that the valid inferences of logic follow from
the structural features of judgments, although he still
maintained that Aristotle had essentially said
everything there was to say about logic as a discipline.

In the 20th Century, however, the work of Gottlob

Frege, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand
Russell on Symbolic Logic, turned Kant's assertion on
its head. This new logic, expounded in their joint
work "Principia Mathematica", is much broader in
scope than Aristotelian logic, and even contains
classical logic within it, albeit as a minor part. It
resembles a mathematical calculus and deals with
the relations of symbols to each other.

Types of Logic

Logic in general can be divided into Formal

Logic, Informal Logic and Symbolic
Logic and Mathematical Logic:

• Formal Logic:
Formal Logic is what we think of as traditional
logic or philosophical logic, namely the study
of inference with purely formal and explicit
content (i.e. it can be expressed as a particular
application of a wholly abstract rule), such as the
rules of formal logic that have come down to us
 from Aristotle. (See the section on Deductive
Logic below).
A formal system (also called a logical calculus) is
used to derive one expression (conclusion) from
one or more other expressions (premises). These
premises may be axioms (a self-evident
proposition, taken for granted)
or theorems (derived using a fixed set
of inference rules and axioms, without any
additional assumptions).
Formalism is the philosophical theory
that formal statements (logical or mathematical)
have no intrinsic meaning but that
its symbols (which are regarded as physical
entities) exhibit a form that has useful
applications.
• Informal Logic:
Informal Logic is a recent discipline which
studies natural language arguments, and
attempts to develop a logic to assess, analyze and
improve ordinary language (or "everyday")
reasoning. Natural language here means a
language that is spoken, written or signed by
humans for general-purpose communication, as
distinguished from formal languages (such
as computer-programming languages)
or constructed languages (such as Esperanto).
It focuses on the reasoning and argument one
finds in personal exchange, advertising, political
debate, legal argument, and the social
commentary that characterizes newspapers,
television, the Internet and other forms of mass
media.
• Symbolic Logic:
Symbolic Logic is the study of symbolic
abstractions that capture the formal features of
logical inference. It deals with the relations of
symbols to each other, often using
complex mathematical calculus, in an attempt to
solve intractable problems traditional formal
 logic is not able to address.
It is often divided into two sub-branches:
o Predicate Logic: a system in which
formulae contain quantifiable variables.
(See the section on Predicate Logic below).
o Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic): a
system in which formulae
representing propositions can be formed
by combining atomic propositions
using logical connectives, and a system of
formal proof rules allows certain formulae
to be established as theorems. (See the
section on Propositional Logic below).
• Mathematical Logic:
Both the application of the techniques of formal
logic to mathematics and mathematical
reasoning, and, conversely, the application
of mathematical techniques to the
representation and analysis of formal logic.
The earliest use of mathematics and geometry in
relation to logic and philosophy goes back to
the Ancient Greeks such
as Euclid, Plato and Aristotle.
Computer science emerged as a discipline in the
1940's with the work of Alan Turing (1912 -
1954) on the Entscheidungsproblem, which
followed from the theories of Kurt Gödel (1906 -
1978), particularly his incompleteness theorems.
In the 1950s and 1960s, researchers predicted
that when human knowledge could be expressed
using logic with mathematical notation, it would
be possible to create a machine that reasons
(or artificial intelligence), although this turned
out to be more difficult than expected because of
the complexity of human reasoning.
Mathematics-related doctrines include:
o Logicism: perhaps the boldest attempt to
apply logic to mathematics, pioneered by
philosopher-logicians such as Gottlob
Frege and Bertrand Russell, especially the
 application of mathematics to logic in the
form of proof theory, model theory, set
theory and recursion theory.
o Intuitionism: the doctrine which holds that
logic and mathematics does not consist
of analytic activities wherein deep
properties of existence are revealed and
applied, but merely the application
of internally consistent methods to realize
more complex mental constructs.

Deductive Logic

Deductive reasoning concerns what

follows necessarily from given premises (i.e. from
a general premise to a particular one).
An inference is deductively valid if (and only if) there
is no possible situation in which all the premises
are true and the conclusion false. However, it should
be remembered that a false premise can possibly lead
to a false conclusion.

Deductive reasoning was developed

by Aristotle, Thales, Pythagoras and other Greek
philosophers of the Classical Period. At the core of
deductive reasoning is the syllogism (also known
as term logic),usually attributed to Aristotle), where
one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two
others (the premises), each of which has one term in
common with the conclusion. For example:

Major premise: All humans are mortal.

Minor premise: Socrates is human.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

An example of deduction is:

All apples are fruit.

All fruits grow on trees.
Therefore all apples grow on trees.
One might deny the initial premises, and therefore
deny the conclusion. But anyone who accepts the
premises must accept the conclusion. Today, some
academics claim that Aristotle's system has little more
than historical value, being made obsolete by the
advent of Predicate Logic and Propositional Logic (see
the sections below).

Inductive Logic

Inductive reasoning is the process of deriving a

reliable generalization from observations (i.e. from
the particular to the general), so that the premises of
an argument are believed to support the conclusion,
but do not necessarily ensure it. Inductive logic is not
concerned with validity or conclusiveness, but with
the soundness of those inferences for which the
evidence is not conclusive.

Many philosophers, including David Hume, Karl

Popper and David Miller, have disputed or denied
the logical admissibility of inductive reasoning. In
particular, Hume argued that it requires inductive
reasoning to arrive at the premises for the principle of
inductive reasoning, and therefore the justification for
inductive reasoning is a circular argument.

An example of strong induction (an argument in which

the truth of the premise would make the truth of the
conclusion probable but not definite) is:

All observed crows are black.

Therefore:

All crows are black.

An example of weak induction (an argument in which

the link between the premise and the conclusion is
weak, and the conclusion is not even necessarily
probable) is:

I always hang pictures on nails.

Therefore:

All pictures hang from nails.

Modal Logic

Modal Logic is any system of formal logic that

attempts to deal with modalities (expressions
associated with notions
of possibility, probability and necessity). Modal Logic,
therefore, deals with terms such as "eventually",
"formerly", "possibly", "can", "could", "might", "may",
"must", etc.

Modalities are ways in which propositions can be true

or false. Types of modality include:

• Alethic Modalities: Includes possibility and

necessity, as well as impossibility and
contingency. Some propositions are impossible
(necessarily false), whereas others are
contingent (both possibly true and possibly
false).
• Temporal Modalities: Historical and future truth
or falsity. Some propositions were true/false in
the past and others will be true/false in the
future.
• Deontic Modalities: Obligation and
permissibility. Some propositions ought to be
true/false, while others are permissible.
• Epistemic Modalities: Knowledge and belief.
Some propositions are known to be true/false,
and others are believed to be true/false.

Although Aristotle's logic is almost entirely concerned

with categorical syllogisms, he did anticipate modal
logic to some extent, and its connection with
potentiality and time. Modern modal logic was
founded by Gottlob Frege, although he initially
doubted its viability, and it was only later developed
by Rudolph Carnap (1891 - 1970), Kurt Gödel (1906 -
1978), C.I. Lewis (1883 - 1964) and then Saul
Kripke (1940 - ) who established System K, the form of
Modal Logic that most scholars use today).

Propositional Logic

Propositional Logic (or Sentential Logic) is

concerned only with sentential connectives and logical
operators (such as "and", "or", "not", "if ... then ...",
"because" and "necessarily"), as opposed to Predicate
Logic (see below), which also concerns itself with
the internal structure of atomic propositions.

Propositional Logic, then, studies ways

of joining and/or modifying entire propositions,
statements or sentences to form more
complex propositions, statements or sentences, as well
as the logical relationships and properties that are
derived from these methods of combining or altering
statements. In propositional logic, the simplest
statements are considered as indivisible units.

The Stoic philosophers in the late 3rd

century B.C. attempted to study such statement
operators as "and", "or" and "if ... then ...",
and Chrysippus (c. 280-205 B.C.) advanced a kind of
propositional logic, by marking out a number of
different ways of forming complex premises for
arguments. This system was also studied by Medieval
logicians, although propositional logic did not really
come to fruition until the mid-19th Century, with the
advent of Symbolic Logic in the work of logicians such
as Augustus DeMorgan (1806-1871), George
Boole (1815-1864) and Gottlob Frege.

Predicate Logic
Predicate Logic allows sentences to be analyzed into
subject and argument in several different ways,
unlike Aristotelian syllogistic logic, where the forms
that the relevant part of the involved judgments took
must be specified and limited (see the section
on Deductive Logic above). Predicate Logic is also able
to give an account of quantifiers general enough to
express all arguments occurring in natural language,
thus allowing the solution of the problem of multiple
generality that had perplexed medieval logicians.

For instance, it is intuitively clear that if:

Some cat is feared by every mouse

then it follows logically that:

All mice are afraid of at least one cat

but because the sentences above each contain two

quantifiers ('some' and 'every' in the first sentence and
'all' and 'at least one' in the second sentence), they
cannot be adequately represented in traditional logic.

Predicate logic was designed as a form of mathematics,

and as such is capable of all sorts of mathematical
reasoning beyond the powers of term or syllogistic
logic. In first-order logic (also known as first-order
predicate calculus), a predicate can only refer to
a single subject, but predicate logic can also deal
with second-order logic, higher-order logic, many-
sorted logic or infinitary logic. It is also capable of
many commonsense inferences that elude term logic,
and (along with Propositional Logic - see below) has
all but supplanted traditional term logic in most
philosophical circles.

Predicate Logic was initially developed by Gottlob

Frege and Charles Peirce in the late 19th Century, but
it reached full fruition in the Logical
Atomism of Whitehead and Russell in the 20th
Century (developed out of earlier work by Ludwig
Wittgenstein).

Fallacies

A logical fallacy is any sort of mistake in reasoning or

inference, or, essentially, anything that causes an
argument to go wrong. There are two main
categories of fallacy, Fallacies of
Ambiguity and Contextual Fallacies:

• Fallacies of Ambiguity: a term is ambiguous if it

has more than one meaning. There are two main
types:
o equivocation: where a single word can be
used in two different senses.
o amphiboly: where the ambiguity arises due
to sentence structure (often due
to dangling participles or the inexact use
of negatives), rather than the meaning of
individual words.
• Contextual Fallacies: which depend on
the context or circumstances in which sentences
are used. There are many different types, among
the more common of which are:
o Fallacies of Significance: where it is
unclear whether an assertion is significant
or not.
o Fallacies of Emphasis: the incorrect
emphasis of words in a sentence.
o Fallacies of Quoting Out of Context: the
manipulation of the context of a quotation.
o Fallacies of Argumentum ad Hominem: a
statement cannot be shown to be false
merely because the individual who makes
it can be shown to be of defective
character.
o Fallacies of Arguing from Authority: truth
or falsity cannot be proven merely because
 the person saying it is considered an
"authority" on the subject.
o Fallacies of Arguments which Appeal to
Sentiments: reporting how people feel
about something in order to persuade
rather than prove.
o Fallacies of Argument from Ignorance: a
statement cannot be proved true just
because there is no evidence to disprove it.
o Fallacies of Begging the Question: a
circular argument, where effectively the
same statement is used both as a premise
and as a conclusion.
o Fallacies of Composition: the assumption
that what is true of a part is also true of the
whole.
o Fallacies of Division: the converse
assumption that what is true of a whole
must be also true of all of its parts.
o Fallacies of Irrelevant Conclusion: where
the conclusion concerns something other
than what the argument was initially
trying to prove.
o Fallacies of Non-Sequitur: an
argumentative leap, where the conclusion
does not necessarily follow from the
premises.
o Fallacies of Statistics: statistics can be
manipulated and biased to "prove" many
different hypotheses.

These are just some of the most commonly

encountered types, the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy page on Fallacies lists 176!

Paradoxes

A paradox is a statement or sentiment that

is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common
sense and yet is perhaps true in fact. Conversely, a
paradox may be a statement that is actually self-
contradictory (and therefore false) even though
it appears true. Typically, either the statements in
question do not really imply the contradiction, the
puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the
premises themselves are not all really true or cannot
all be true together.

The recognition
of ambiguities, equivocations and unstated
assumptions underlying known paradoxes has led to
significant advances in science, philosophy and
mathematics. But many paradoxes (e.g. Curry's
Paradox) do not yet have universally accepted
resolutions.

It can be argued that there are four classes of

paradoxes:

• Veridical Paradoxes: which produce a result

that appears absurd but can be demonstrated to
be nevertheless true.
• Falsidical Paradoxes: which produce a result that
not only appears false but actually is false.
• Antinomies: which are neither veridical nor
falsidical, but produce a self-contradictory result
by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning.
• Dialetheias: which produce a result which is
both true and false at the same time and in the
same sense.

Paradoxes often result from self-reference (where a

sentence or formula refers to itself
directly), infinity (an argument which generates an
infinite regress, or infinite series of supporting
references), circular definitions (in which a
proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or
explicitly in one of the premises), vagueness (where
there is no clear fact of the matter whether a concept
applies or not), false or misleading statements
(assertions that are either willfully or unknowingly
untrue or misleading), and half-truths (deceptive
statements that include some element of truth).

Some famous paradoxes include:

• Epimenides' Liar Paradox: Epimenides was a

Cretan who said "All Cretans are liars." Should
we believe him?
• Liar Paradox (2): "This sentence is false."
• Liar Paradox (3): "The next sentence is false. The
previous sentence is true."
• Curry's Paradox: "If this sentence is true, then
Santa Claus exists."
• Quine's Paradox: "yields falsehood when
preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when
preceded by its quotation.
• Russell's Barber Paradox: If a barber shaves all
and only those men in the village who do not
shave themselves, does he shave himself?
• Grandfather Paradox: Suppose a time traveler
goes back in time and kills his grandfather when
the latter was only a child. If his grandfather dies
in childhood, then the time traveler cannot be
born. But if the time traveler is never born, how
can he have traveled back in time in the first
place?
• Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox: Before a moving
object can travel a certain distance (e.g. a person
crossing a room), it must get halfway there.
Before it can get halfway there, it must get a
quarter of the way there. Before traveling a
quarter, it must travel one-eighth; before an
eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. As this
sequence goes on forever, an infinite number of
points must be crossed, which is logically
impossible in a finite period of time, so the
distance will never be covered (the room
crossed, etc).
• Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: If
Achilles allows the tortoise a head start in a race,
then by the time Achilles has arrived at the
tortoise's starting point, the tortoise has already
run on a shorter distance. By the time Achilles
reaches that second point, the tortoise has
moved on again, etc, etc. So Achilles can never
catch the tortoise.
• Zeno's Arrow Paradox: If an arrow is fired from
a bow, then at any moment in time, the arrow
either is where it is, or it is where it is not. If it
moves where it is, then it must be standing still,
and if it moves where it is not, then it can't be
there. Thus, it cannot move at all.
• Theseus' Ship Paradox: After Theseus died, his
ship was put up for public display. Over time, all
of the planks had rotted at one time or another,
and had been replaced with new matching
planks. If nothing remained of the actual
"original" ship, was this still Theseus' ship?
• Sorites (Heap of Sand) Paradox: If you take away
one grain of sand from a heap, it is still a heap. If
grains are individually removed, is it still a heap
when only one grain remains? If not, when did it
change from a heap to a non-heap?
• Hempel's Raven Paradox: If all ravens are black,
then in strict terms of logical equivalence,
everything that is not black is not a raven. So
every sighting of a blue sweater or a red cup
confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black.
• Petronius' Paradox" "Moderation in all things,
including moderation."
• Paradoxical Notice: "Please ignore this notice."
• Dull Numbers Paradox: If there is such a thing
as a dull number, then we can divide all numbers
into two sets - interesting and dull. In the set of
dull numbers there will be only one number that
is the smallest. Since it is the smallest dull
number it becomes, ipso facto, an interesting
number. We must therefore remove it from the
 dull set and place it in the other. But now there
will be another smallest uninteresting number.
Repeating this process will make any dull
number interesting.
• Protagoras' Pupil Paradox: A lawyer made an
arrangement with one of his pupils whereby the
pupil was to pay for his instruction after he had
won his first case. After a while, the lawyer grew
impatient with the pupil's lack of clients, and
decided to sue him for the amount owed. The
lawyer's logic was that if he, the lawyer, won, the
pupil would pay him according to the judgment
of the court; if the pupil won, then he would have
to honor the agreement and pay anyway. The
pupil, however, argued that if he, the pupil, won,
then by the judgment of the court he need not
pay the lawyer; and if the lawyer won, then the
agreement did not come into force and the pupil
need not pay the lawyer.
• Moore's paradox: "It will rain but I don't believe
that it will."
• Schrödinger's Cat: There is a cat in a sealed box,
and the cat's life or death is dependent on the
state of a particular subatomic particle.
According to quantum mechanics, the particle
only has a definite state at the exact moment of
quantum measurement, so that the cat remains
both alive and dead until the moment the box is
opened.
• "Turtles all the way down": A story about
an infinite regress, often attributed to Bertrand
Russell but probably dating from centuries
earlier, based on an old (possibly Indian)
cosmological myth that the earth is a flat disk
supported by a giant elephant that is in turn
supported by a giant turtle. In the story, when
asked what then supported the turtle, the
response was "it's turtles all the way down".

Major Doctrines
Three doctrines which may be considered under the
heading of Logic are:

Intuitionism Logicism Logical Positivism