Being familiar with logic is a double-edged sword. While it teaches rules about what counts as a good argument, it can be frustrating to realize how many bad arguments there are in the public sphere. While the line between good and bad is not always clear, it is beyond question that calling Omarosa Manigault Newman a dog is an ad hominem unrelated to whether her book is accurate, that Michael Avenetti straw-manned John Delaney by equating Delaney’s claims of media bias with claims of not getting enough media coverage, and that Trump’s creation of a list of people to whom he will deny security clearance is a red herring designed to distract from whether or not Trump used the n-word. As an illustration of how pervasive bad arguments are, each of these examples comes from the past week and was easily recalled from memory alone.
I like including a bit of logic in all my introductory classes. It comes as a breath of fresh air after discussions about what counts as a person and how we can determine truth. Additionally, it provides tools to students grappling with the requirements of professional life. When we practice identifying fallacies, I will often pull examples from the news or statements by public figures, taking care to show that fallacies can be made regardless of one’s class, party affiliation, gender, race, or other identifying factors. If nothing else, it serves as a reminder that we must all remain critical, and that the more we provide thoughtful criticisms, the better our future arguments will hopefully be. Here are some papers on the uses introductory logic has.
- Lorenz Demey, “Using Syllogistics to Teach Metalogic,” Metaphilosophy, July 2017.
- Bob Hale, “Logic: An Introductory Course,” Philosophical Quarterly, January 1987.
- Nate Kramer, “Heiberg’s Introductory Lecture to the Logic Course and Other Texts,” Scandinavian Studies, Summer 2008.
- Daniel Hicks and John Milanese, “The Logic Game: A Two-Player Game of Propositional Logic,” Teaching Philosophy, March 2015.
- Triton Ong, Matthew Normand and Merritt Schenk, “Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach college students to identify logical fallacies,” Behavioral Interventions, April 2018.
See the Routledge APA member page for more books on Introductory Logic. APA members get a 20% discount on all books.
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