Symbolic Logic

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  • ajw99a
    Junior Member
    • Jul 2010
    • 1

    Symbolic Logic

    I'm curious why the logic curriculum focuses on traditional logic when Symbolic logic offers greater depth and resources for dealing with a range of question including modality and quantification?
  • spiland
    Director, MPOA
    • Jun 2008
    • 454

    #2
    Traditional Logic rather than Symbolic

    Thanks for the post and the question.

    Our program focuses on traditional logic based upon several core principles. Let me elaborate a bit. The first is that the Classical Trivium approach that we stress is language centered, that is, the everyday language, grammar, and syntax that we use as human beings. Latin, Logic, and Rhetoric; this is the order of our method. Logic, from the traditional standpoint, is a uniquely human endeavor. We seek to understand words (they are either clear or unclear), statements (their truth and/or falsity), and whole arguments (they are either valid or invalid, or sound).

    Secondly, traditional logic has more in common with the philosophical theory called realism (e.g. there is such a thing as human nature we all share). Modern symbolic logic has more in common with the philosophical theory called nominalism (e.g. there is no such thing as human 'nature' as such, only concrete particular humans). We take a realist approach to explain commonality of attributes among concrete particulars, and is in keeping with an Aristotelian view.

    Finally, contemporary propositional calculus, predicate logic, and modal logic have their uses. Our curriculum does not claim (that I am aware of) that modern symbolic logic is not beneficial and has no applications. Modern/contemporary symbolic logic has many real-world applications in the areas of computer science, science in general, et al. Propositional calculus is how computers "speak".

    One of the central issues is that we presuppose the truth that humans are not computers that talk quantitatively like computers, and we do not speak as such. We have emotions, consciousness, memories, desires, fears, etc. It takes human language, the language we speak, to communicate all of these. And in Traditional Logic, we seek to provide a reliable, well-worn, language-based approach to help students structure their language.

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