Logic

Originally posted by bbarr
They may try to teach critical reasoning, but they rarely aim to teach symbolic logic at any level.

Unfortunate. It's so much simpler than, say, long division or even multiplication, which can be taught to most elementary school students. The truth tables for the logical operators are dwarfed in size by the single-digit multiplication tables.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
The truth tables for the logical operators are dwarfed in size by the single-digit multiplication tables.

...and the motivation for them is much more clear.

I actually have a small amount of experimental data on this: I've given a couple of lessons on symbolic logic to my mother's eighth-grade English class. While I'm not sure how much of an impression is made, they are at least enthusiastic about it, and your assertion that there's nothing in logic conceptually beyond the other things taught in the eighth grade is supported.

Originally posted by Badwater
I think logic should be required and taught at the high school level. Too many people either don't understand it or have a very poor understanding of it. Few things in life are more useful than being able to analyze cause and effect through logic.

Logic is a noble diety - you could do much worse. 🙂

I agree that logic should be taught in school. It's a subject sadly lacking in our educational system. I also think the basic elements of Judism, Islam, and Christianity should be taught as well. Students should know they have choices, and should know the basic elements of what they are.
😏

Originally posted by bill718
I agree that logic should be taught in school. It's a subject sadly lacking in our educational system. I also think the basic elements of Judism, Islam, and Christianity should be taught as well. Students should know they have choices, and should know the basic elements of what they are.
😏

What do Christianity, Islam and Judaism share that makes them the religious choices of which children should be made aware of in schools, to the exclusion of others? Why not Hinduism, for example, which is as historically complicated as and almost as large as Christianity and Islam and much larger than Judaism? Why not Buddhism, which in addition to being large and influential, could be used to draw attention to the idea that theism does not have a monopoly on the childrens' spiritual options? Should students be made aware of the pan-cultural presence of many spiritual practices, like some form of meditation, among their options? What about entheogens? Spiritually speaking, why should the Abrahamic religions and their attendant rituals be promoted as options, and not, say, the human sacrifices offered to Huitzilopotchtli?

Originally posted by jaywill
We often use logic to commit sins. We also use it do good works.

Can you give me one example of using logic to commit sin. And here I do not mean using the logic as a means.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Can you give me one example of using logic to commit sin. And here I do not mean using the logic as a means.

What?

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
...and the motivation for them is much more clear.

I actually have a small amount of experimental data on this: I've given a couple of lessons on symbolic logic to my mother's eighth-grade English class. While I'm not sure how much of an impression is made, they are at least enthusiastic about it, and your assertion that there's nothing in logic conceptually beyond the other things taught in the eighth grade is supported.

This summer I taught propositional and predicate logic to a class of gifted 7-9th graders for the Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and they did just as well with this material as undergraduates taking the comparable Philosophy 120 class at UW. Both populations have some trouble with the inference rules for disjunctions, and with the conceptually related inference rules for existential quantifiers. The younger students, by the end of the course, were doing better than typical undergraduates, primarily because they were intellectually curious. We were even able to spend some time with modal logic, and many of them were able to see the similarities between the necessity operators and universal quantifiers (since in possible world semantics 'necessarily P' is synonymous to 'Every possible world is such that P'😉, and possibility operators and existential quantifiers (since 'possibly P' is synonymous to 'At least one possible world is such that P'😉. There is no reason I can think of not to teach propositional and predicate logic in high school, though there may be a reason to teach it earlier rather than later.

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
What?

We (many atheists -and many non-extremist theists) have noticed how many religious extremists try and make out that science, reason and even logic can be “evil” and so should be viewed with suspicion to try and persuade people to use blind faith rather than reason.
Thus we are immediately and automatically naturally suspicious of a theists that starts talking about “logic” and “sin” in the same sentence because we cannot help but wonder if he is implying that the two things can sometimes and somehow be the same thing -whether or not he is actually doing so can be another matter.

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Unfortunate. It's so much simpler than, say, long division or even multiplication, which can be taught to most elementary school students. The truth tables for the logical operators are dwarfed in size by the single-digit multiplication tables.

We were taught propositional logic in grade 5 (first year of grammar school). I think it wasn't in the official curriculum, but our maths teacher deemed it important and therefore taught it anyway. I thought it was fun.

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
We (many atheists -and many non-extremist theists) have noticed how many religious extremists try and make out that science, reason and even logic can be “evil” and so should be viewed with suspicion to try and persuade people to use blind faith rather than reason.
Thus we are immediately and automatically naturally suspicious of a theists that star ...[text shortened]... mes and somehow be the same thing -whether or not he is actually doing so can be another matter.

I just meant that I'm having trouble parsing twitehead's challenge. Generally, "using X to do Y" is synonymous with "using X as a means of doing Y".

I should hope that logic and sin cohabitate in sentences because logic seems likely to be useful for teasing out some of the silliness that inheres in many of the religious notions of sin I've seen.

Originally posted by bbarr
This summer I taught propositional and predicate logic to a class of gifted 7-9th graders for the Robinson Center for Young Scholars, and they did just as well with this material as undergraduates taking the comparable Philosophy 120 class at UW. Both populations have some trouble with the inference rules for disjunctions, and with the conceptually related in ogic in high school, though there may be a reason to teach it earlier rather than later.

What I find most interesting is the difference in intellectual curiosity between the young students and the undergraduates -- I can't compare my experiences with the two directly (because logic is basically more interesting than the calculus and linear algebra I've taught to undergraduates, and I also have unfair interest-holding advantages like being personally novel when I teach my mother's classes) -- but I'm pretty sure your observation is not unique to your situation and I wonder what social forces (I think they are largely social, not biological) are at work to diminish a population's average curiosity between those two ages. It's because of those same forces that what you and the Robinson Center do strikes me as being like educationally heroic.

Originally posted by bill718
I agree that logic should be taught in school. It's a subject sadly lacking in our educational system. I also think the basic elements of Judism, Islam, and Christianity should be taught as well. Students should know they have choices, and should know the basic elements of what they are.
😏

Religion has no business in the public school system. Save it for the religious institutions. I've learned quite a bit about theology and none of it in the public school system. If someone has an interest in that, they can easily find the educational resources for it. The public school systems are NOT equipped to deal with adequate teaching of the major beliefs; never mind the others and if you're going to teach one then you'd better be prepared to teach all. Better to teach none.

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
I just meant that I'm having trouble parsing twitehead's challenge. Generally, "using X to do Y" is synonymous with "using X as a means of doing Y".

I should hope that logic and sin cohabitate in sentences because logic seems likely to be useful for teasing out some of the silliness that inheres in many of the religious notions of sin I've seen.

Jaywill implied that following the dictates of logic could lead you to sin. I dispute that. I don't believe there is such a thing as a 'logical coarse of action' where logic alone is the sole source of the decision. I believe that jaywill has incorrectly identified logics role in peoples actions.
My challenge is for him to demonstrate the claim that following logic may lead to sin, but I do not wish to include cases where there were primary reasons for the action and logics role was solely in evaluating those primary reasons.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Jaywill implied that following the dictates of logic could lead you to sin. I dispute that. I don't believe there is such a thing as a 'logical coarse of action' where logic alone is the sole source of the decision. I believe that jaywill has incorrectly identified logics role in peoples actions.
My challenge is for him to demonstrate the claim that fol ...[text shortened]... rimary reasons for the action and logics role was solely in evaluating those primary reasons.

I see. Of course I agree with you. I find a useful analogy in situations where people semantically overload the word "logic" by adding semantics to logic (😉) is to substitute "grammar" for "logic", because, in your example, a sin in the name of deductive propriety am about as likely as a sin in the name of good subject-verb agreement (not against it 😉).

Originally posted by ChronicLeaky
I see. Of course I agree with you. I find a useful analogy in situations where people semantically overload the word "logic" by adding semantics to logic (😉) is to substitute "grammar" for "logic", because, in your example, a sin in the name of deductive propriety am about as likely as a sin in the name of good subject-verb agreement (not against it 😉).

Semantics is not even part of grammar. You have clearly 'overloaded' the term 'syntax'. Logic does, however, have a number of applications in both syntax and semantics, particularly in the field of quantification theory. Logical quantifiers help clarify issues of scope, such as smaller/wider scope and inner/outer negation. The distinction between logician and linguist is not always clear-cut. A linguist may need to read Bertrand Russel and a logician Noam Chomsky.