13

In this paper, I will briefly outline the design of ~

logical Thinking course which I have developed at-H unter
College. I n order to address the basic needs of students in
the different academic disciplines, this course offering
includes formal logic in its content. I n giving an account of
this course, I will make a special note of the different sorts
of needs that must be addressed by courses which claim
to teach the basic skills, including those of reasoning,
A Role for Formal Logic analysis and critical thinking in the different educational
fields of study. I n doing so, I will examine the reasons why
teaching formal logic must not be viewed simply as
in I nformal Logic teaching a specialized subject with no generalizable
applicability; that, on the contrary, formal logic could play
Courses an important role in easing the process of initiation into
the more technical and rigorous disciplines. Note, how-
ever, that I am not recommending that formal logic be
taught for its own sake. Rather, I am urging that this formal
discipline be used in such a way as to generate basic skills
~ark VVeinstein and attitudes needed for the study of the more difficult
technical matter of the scientific and mathematical
Hunter College disciplines.

The distinction between "formal" and "informal" logic

is based upon an 'apparent distinction within the domain
of logic itself: those areas of the discipline that utilize II
technical apparatus and those others involving problems
that are predominantly dealt with in ordinary English. In The logical Thinking course that I have developed
the educational context, however, formal and informal follows a fairly standard procedure for roughly the first
logic courses are usually distinguished on the grounds that two thirds of the term. We use an informal logical text [1],
they have different roles to play in the college curriculum. and attempt to develop analytical skills through a dis-
The commonly held view of the matter is that formal logic cussion and writing based program. A noteworthy aspect
courses are designed to teach the special subject matter emphasised in this section of the course is that in their
of logic. I nformal logic courses, on the other hand, are examination of arguments, students are encouraged to
perceived as providing those broad analytical skills that write brief analytical essays. Rather than merely clas-
have a more general utility. These skills are believed to be sifying fallacies, students are asked to analyse examples
basic to the acquisition of academic proficiency in the and give arguments as to the contextual considerations
large spectrum of academic disciplines. that would support or defeat a charge of fallacy.

At Hunter College, CUNY, where I have developed a The main area of innovation in the course, however,
Logical Thinking course over the past several years, logical is to be traced to the use of elements of formal logic to
Thinking courses are described as" designed to serve as a develop and fashion in a self-conscious way skills required
foundation for work in the various academic disciplines." for learning technical subjects. And, in teaching these
Similar claims seem to lie at the heart of the proliferation formal elements, a special attempt is made to guide and
of informal logic courses in colleges throughout the Unied help students with the problems of maintaining a level of
States and Canada However, in the design of many of concentration commensurate with the difficulty of the
these courses, it is too often not realized that informal class material, taking careful notes and reorganizing and
logic is in and of itself only minimally useful for the studying from class notes. Along with these basic class-
development of those skills central to proficiency in room issues and others involving learning from technical
technical courses in the Sciences, Mathematics, Com- texts, reading slowly enough for comprehension, the use
puter Programming, Accounting, and the like. In other of underlines and marginal notes, the careful serial deve-
words, logical Thinking courses which are exclusively lopment of required skills and the close attention to
limited to teaching informal logic seem to be geared more exercises and the performance of required tasks on
towards helping students in the Humanities and Social demand. The insight governing this approach is that when
Sciences, and do not have quite the same degree of taking technical courses, students who are deficient in
usefulness for students interested in doing work in the these basic classroom skills as well as in the skills of
more formal disciplines. Therefore, if logical Thinking analysis have to deal with their deficiencies within the
courses are to really serve as a "foundation for work in the context of intrinsically difficult subject matters. And the
various academic disciplines," they need to also help student cannot distinguish problems that are the result of
develop the skills required to deal with technical voca- basic skills deficits as distinguished from the difficulties
bularies and the use of rigorous and careful procedures ariSing from issue related to the inherent complexities
that define the Sciences, Mathematics, etc. And, in order within the subject at hand. It seems to me that even at the
to do so, it seems to me that the design of such courses beginners level, college courses in Math and Science
must make room for "formal" logic in addition to the required conceptual abilities that are far in excess of those
"informal" logic that generally completely exhausts the demanded in the learning of portions of elementary
eburse content. formal logic.
 14

Logic, in its formal aspect, as tau~ht at the elem~.~­ quizzes frequently, as a corrective to the process of
tary level, is without a doubt the most simple and obvious learning in the classroom. These exams, although used in
of the technical disciplines. Beginning courses in Mathe- part for grading, have as their main function that of calling
matics, Physics, Geology or Calculus, all require more the attention of students to the problems of compiling,
specialized skills than those demanded in the learning of organizing and retaining classroom lecture materials. The
truth tables, term logic or elementary set theory. Formal work covered in class, in conjunction with homework
logic is thus ideal for developing generalizable tech- assignments, is sufficient, if properly managed, for
niques available to the technical subject areas. Logic is excellence in the quizzes. The quizzes thus afford the
particularly appropriate, when the course design uses student a probe into his adequacy at the task of class-
formal elements, as a device for coming to grips with room learning. Homework assignments are similarly con-
fundamental problems of learning unfamiliar but highly structed to force the student to come to grips with short-
coherent subject matters. Furthermore, my experience comings. Assignments cannot be handled unless the
with such a course design reveals that basic technical skills student has adequately accurate notes. Again, this is cru-
development is consistent with learning a respectable cial. Thus, the lack of a supporting text compels the
amount of logic and elementary meta-mathematics, all student to adequately compile class lectures if he is to do
within the framework of a course wehre two-thirds of the the required work at all. This prevents, among other
class time is spent in acquiring the linguistic skills required things, the self-defeating practice, common to students
for sound critical thinking. who have only a poor conceptual grasp of abstract
material and tasks, of using text book examplars to
The design of the formal aspect of the course divides dummy up approximations of correct work in doing text
the student's task into two Independent but related book exercises.
procedures. Starting at mid-semester, and in addition to
their work in informal logic, the students are asked to At the end of the semester, the students take a final
begin working through a programmed logic text. [2] exam on the material in the programmed logic text. The
Students are expected to finish the first two sections by examination is structured progressively, designed such
the end of the semester. (Better students complete the that all students can answer some questions in each of the
entire book for extra credit.) Students do the programmed areas covered in the tel(t. But questions become difficult
text at home, at their own pace, and with no formal fairly rapidly so that only the very best students can
assistance within the class. The assignment of the pro- answer all of the el(am questions. Performance on the
grammed text is timed so that students have truth tables el(ams is fairly indicatrve of how much has really been
within their repertoire when we begin the last third of the learned from the tel(t - governed only by the students'
course, and are working with Predicate Logic as we are own sense of responsibility and their awareness that the
completing the final segment of the course. task must be completed by the semester's end. Needless
to say, the amount of material actually mastered varies
widely within a class. But this is crucial information for the
During the last third of the semester, I teach seg- student. The student has a measure of his own effecti-
ments of term logic, using a lecture format. What is most veness as a reader of technical material and as a learner of
crucial is that this material is taught with no supporting rigourous techniques.
text. Students can only learn the material by attending
class, by maintaininga high level of attention and by taking
careful notes. I teach an artificially mathematized version
of term logic. So, for example, the square of opposition is
taught with truth value functions. Definitions are given in
mathematical style. Relationships are presented formally
as holding between unordered and ordered pairs. To This Logical Thinking course gives the students a
classify categorical propositions, I use elementary ma- thorough introduction to the techniques and processes of
trices. The matter of existential presupposition and the informal logic. They learn discussion as well as writing
shift into Boolean Algebra is treated within a set theoretic skills. In addition, they become familiar with useful
context. Students are asked to prove elementary fragments of modern logic and confront a style of mathe-
theorems in set theory, using truth tables in intuitive ways. matical prose that is common to many technical areas.
But, again, what is crucial to the whole process is that by But, most importantly, students learn these formal ele-
not using a text, students are forced to confront their ments in a fashion that enables them t6 focus on the
inability to learn from a teacher. Notice: what we are doing process through which they learn other technical sub-
here is artificially isolating a very significant variable. By jects. They are forced to sustain attention and to represent
not having the support of a text, the student is forced to a course correctly in their notes, compile these notes in an
face his inability to sustain attention, maintain an ade- adequate fashion and perform related tasks requiring the
quate level of concentration, and take careful notes. Thus, memorization of elements and processes. They also work
the absence of a text forces the student to get the material through a tel(t in an alien and, perhaps, non-intuitive
through a classroom process. Information must be com- subject matter. They use this material in a theoretic
piled in the form of class notes. By the end ofthe semester, fashion, since an effort is made throughout to use truth
a student will have completed a notebook in term logic tables and quantified el(pressions, whenever possible in
and set theory. This notebook constitutes one of the major metalinguistic formulations of term logic and set theory.
tasks for this segment of the semester. The notebook is the Students not only get this material, but they get it through
result of rewriting and reorganizing the classroom notes seeing it applied within an inherently elementary subject
on a regular basis. The criterion of adequacy for the matter, and in comprehensible ways. Again, since these
notebook is that it permits someone uninitiated in the dis- concepts are only available through the compilation and
cipline to learn it from the student's notes. organization of classroom material, these materials, if
learned at all, are, of necessity, learned with compre-
During this segment of the semester, the students take hensiveness and clarity.
 15

Needless to say, the course as I teach it requires a

commitment to tutoring individual students. But what is
response
surprising is that if the homework assignments and
quizzes are carefully developed, most students learn the
material with no special assistance; and, this in classes of
students in their first year of college and including many
with impoverished high school backgrounds and a host of
intellectual and socio-cultural problems. The students
learn logic through coming to grips with the logic of
learning the technical disciplines in an artificiallly en-
hanced but fairly standard undergraduate setting.
Why Be Charitable?
III

The main contention of this paper has been that

the elements of formal logic, if carefully presented, are Jonathan E. Adler
useful for teaching a wide range of skills required for the
learning of technical subject matter. Notice: I am not Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.
claiming that teaching formallogic1s the only way to teach
those skills. Just as informal logic affords a useful and
available tool for teaching critical thinking, so formal logic
affords a useful and available tool for basic techniques re- I~ "Ch~rity Begi~s at Home," Ralph Johnson [1], fol-
quired for learning technical ~ubject matter. Critical thinking lOWing MIchael Scnven [2], proposes as the Principle of
skills can be taught through a wide variety of courses: Charity that:
history, literature and general philosophy courses, just to
mention a few obvious cases. It is the claim of advocates ... the critic should provide the best possible inter-
of informal logic that informal logic courses can also teach pretation of the material under consideration.
critical thinking, but teach it in a more effective way. The
basic skills of formal analysis can also be taught in a wide Johnson takes the primary justification for this principle
variety of courses. It is my claim that elements of formal to be ethical: "One is under the general obligation to be
logic, if properly presented, can be a device for teaching f~ir ~n one'~ dealing. with ?ther~ ..." A secondary justi-
these technical basic skills in a maximally effective and fIcatIon, again follOWing Scrrven, IS prudential:
self conscious way.
... you want to interpret the argument's meaning in
whatever way makes the most sense and force out of
it, because otherwise, it can easily be reformulated
slightly in order to meet your objections.

My question about this pattern of justification for the

Notes Pri~ciple of Charity is epistemological: Johnson and
Scnven appear to be viewing the analysis and evaluation
1. Kahane, Howard, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric,
?f ~rguments as essentially pragmatic, rather than ob-
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1980, 3rd Edition.
Jt;c~lve (I~ss context-r~lative, as a rought implication). In
2. I use Schagrin, Morton L., The Language of Logic, New
gIVing pnmacy to faIrness to others, and placing the
York: Random House, 1979. 0- secondary prudential justificaiton in a debate-like con-
text, they are using' ,argument" in its familiar rather than
technical sense. Can one find a justification for the
Principle of Charity that fits with a more technical sense of
argument, or a less rhetorical understanding of argument?
Behind my main question is a more general one: can one
provide an account of informal logic that unifies it with the
theory of (cognitive) inquiry or methodology?

Broadly speaking, (cognitive) inquiry is aimed at com-

prehensive truth. We know from Peirce, Dewey and
oth.ers that taking this aim seriously we can draw impli-
catl(;ms for the preferential forms inquiry shoud take. In
partIcular, the public availability of hyotheses and data,
open discussion and criticism, a community of inquiries
shari~~ mutual resp~ct, and s? on, are among the optimal
cond~tlons for reaching that aIm. What is most promising
here IS that this pattern of justification allows us to ground
both the methodology and ethics of our teaching and
investigating a problem in similar terms. We show these
practices as promoting our general aim, rather than
motivated by political, economical, prudential or even
arbitrary reasons. I take it that we would prefer the former
"internal" to the latter "external" justifications. We would