Return logic to tertiary curriculum! | The Manila Times

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Return logic to tertiary curriculum!

AS early as high school, students should be introduced to logic. Drilling into students the pattern of correct thinking can never be a waste of time. On the college and university levels, it should be a fully expanded course, not some grudging appendage to other subjects.<\/p>\r\r

There can never be too much of logic, and a deficit in sound argumentation always imperils advanced learning.<\/p>\r\r

Psychology subjects cannot substitute for logic, for while the former describes how we think, the latter prescribes how we ought to think. And logic is one subject that cannot be relativized. The fallacy of the undistributed middle term in classical logic is an error, whether on the heights of Mount Everest or in the depths of the Marianas Trench! And an argument that follows the rules of validity as well as the rules of replacement in symbolic logic will be valid regardless of skin color, cultural affiliation or national anthem.<\/p>\r\r

Articulateness and fluency are not the same thing as consistency, for logic can never be reduced to sonority. And that is precisely where the trouble lies: Many mediocre instructors and professors are so impressed by students who speak fluently but are not as sensitive to the logical soundness of their arguments nor their capacity to draw consequences from premises. Time was when no college or university student could get by without logic. I have yet to be given a good reason for the excision of logic from the tertiary education curriculum. When persons with muddled thinking took over the reins of regulatory authority in higher education then were lost good sense and thoughtfulness with respect to programs of higher education.<\/p>\r\r

The problems college and university instructors and professors have with students unable to comprehend are not merely reading problems but problems in reasoning. When students are unable to follow the flow of the argument, the train of thought, they do not understand, and what they cannot understand, they often endeavor to memorize. Unfortunately, some professors are more impressed with feats of memory than they are with the soundness of argument. Many law professors insist that their students memorize provisions of law \u2014 something I have repeatedly bemoaned and sharply criticized. The law is rational. As such, it goes by the dictates of reason. If the student understands the purpose of the law and the way its provisions respond to the exigencies of the human situation, memory will follow as a result of understanding. But memorization can never take the place of comprehension, and comprehension calls on logical skills because it requires one to understand how propositions follow each other and to discern the argument that is being made.<\/p>\r\r

The abundance of fallacy that one will find on social media, especially when a divisive post is commented on, or shared with the sharer contributing his own endorsement or reproof, is ample proof of how we have suffered from the egregious error of excluding logic from the curriculum. It is true, of course, that except when one wishes to make a point by spelling out the process of reasoning, one will not generally advance his position in the form of a syllogism. But its rules must be learned so that a student becomes sensitive to and critical of the occurrence of formal fallacies. A clear example is this piece of illogicality. \"All lawyers understand the law, but since John is not a lawyer, he does not understand the law\" is not an infrequently advanced proposition \u2014 an example of the fallacy of the illicit major term so close to home. Material fallacies are by no means rare. In fact, they are committed with such frequency that they have woefully become \"acceptable\" in common estimation. \"It does not pay to be hostile to China because its military is far more powerful than ours\" is classically known as \"argumentum ad baculum\" \u2014 arguing by the rod, an appeal to fear. In a similar fashion, because it is not possible to be both defiant of the pope and a Catholic at the same time, then it follows that you are either not a Catholic or you are not defiant of the Pope \u2014 which is a matter of applying De Morgan's theorems, known in symbolic logic by the rather confounding formulation: \"The negation of the conjunction of two propositions is logically equivalent to the disjunction of their negations, and the negation of the disjunction of two propositions is logically equivalent to the conjunction of their negations.\"<\/p>\r\r

But it is not memorizing the rules that is the main point of logic \u2014 and this is the failing of many professors of logic. It is rather orienting and habituating thought to proceed according to the rules. So, \"modus tollens\" and \"modus ponens\" should not be rules that are memorized but patterns for the arguments one uses, whether in writing or in speaking and arguing. The teacher of logic can pick out, from the ubiquitous plethora of examples, fallacies for the student to identify and criticize. The exercises in symbolic logic \u2014 constructing proofs of validity, whether these be the simple proofs involving connectives or more complicated proofs that involve the rules of quantification, predicate logic and identity have the same purpose that exercises in algebra and mathematics have \u2014 the cultivation of habits of thought.<\/p>\r\r

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Return logic to tertiary curriculum!

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AS early as high school, students should be introduced to logic. Drilling into students the pattern of correct thinking can never be a waste of time. On the college and university levels, it should be a fully expanded course, not some grudging appendage to other subjects.
There can never be too much of logic, and a deficit in sound argumentation always imperils advanced learning.

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