Line of Reasoning

3 Key excerpts on "Line of Reasoning"

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  eBook - PDF

  Learning to Reason

  An Introduction to Logic, Sets, and Relations

  • Nancy Rodgers(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Interscience

    (Publisher)

  Finally, a very special thanks to John Ramey, Coastal Carolina University, for his inspiring use of poetic language, his valuable insights on rhetoric, composition, writing pedagogies and the imagetext, and the generous sharing of his esoteric knowledge in a wide range of fields. This page intentionally left blank Ф Chapter 1 Logical Reasoning L ogical reasoning is a form of discourse that is distin-guished from other forms by its complete objectivity. In order to attain a pure state of objectivity with no room for ambiguities, the language of logic had to be devel-oped with great precision and clearly defined rules. Personal interpretations of a story, a painting, or an historical event may vary considerably, but any two people who understand the language of logic will interpret a logical argument in essentially the same way. Unlike the tangled web of rules that we use subconsciously in our everyday discourse, the rules for logical reasoning are very exact with no exceptions to the rule. When we reason within a logical framework, words must be manipulated according to the rules of the game. Fortunately, the rules are fairly simple because the language of logic is built from only seven basic terms: two quantifiers, for all and for some, and five operators for building compound sentences, not, and, or, implies, and is equivalent to. The first stage in master-ing the art of logical reasoning is to learn how to manipulate these seven terms. Each of these terms is simple by itself, but the meaning can easily be misconstrued when two or more are used in the same sentence, especially since we do not always use them in a consistent way in our everyday language. Once you master the basic rules, called the laws of logic, for using these seven terms, this stage of the reasoning process will be as easy as driving a car. 1.1 Symbolic Language 1.2 Two Quantifiers 1.3 Five Operators 1.4 Laws of Logic 1.5 Logic Circuits 1.6 Translations 1

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  eBook - PDF

  Introduction to Logic

  • Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen, Victor Rodych, Kenneth McMahon(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Logic and Language part I SECTION A REASONING chapter 1 Basic Logical Concepts chapter 2 Analyzing Arguments SECTION B INFORMAL LOGIC chapter 3 Language and Definitions chapter 4 Fallacies Come now, and let us reason together. —Isaiah 1:18 All our lives we are giving and accepting reasons. Reasons are the coin we pay for the beliefs we hold. —Edith Watson Schipper “ ” chapter 1 What Logic Is Logic is the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish correct from incor-rect reasoning. When we reason about any matter, we produce arguments to support our conclu-sions. Our arguments include reasons that we think justify our beliefs. However, not all reasons are good reasons. Therefore we may always ask, when we confront an argument: Does the conclusion reached follow from the premises assumed? To answer this ques-tion there are objective criteria; in the study of logic we seek to discover and apply those criteria. Reasoning is not the only way in which people support assertions they make or accept. They may appeal to authority or to emotion, which can be very persuasive, or they may rely, without reflection, simply on habits. However, when someone wants to make judgments that can be completely relied upon, their only solid foundation will be correct reasoning. Using the methods and techniques of logic—the subject matter of this book—one can distinguish reliably between sound and faulty reasoning. Propositions and Arguments We begin by examining more closely the most fundamental concepts in the study of logic, concepts presupposed in the paragraphs just above. In reasoning we construct and evaluate arguments ; arguments are built with propositions . Although these concepts are apparently simple, they require careful analysis. Logic The study of the methods and principles used to distinguish correct from incorrect reasoning.

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  A Reinterpretation of Linguistic Relativity

  From the perspective of linguistics

  • Guohui Jiang(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Books on Demand

    (Publisher)

  Citing Sapir’s opinion, I would argue that achievements of human spiritual activities, fixed in material (verbal) forms, are closely related to language, since the national language is the main carrier of spiritual achievements of any ethnic culture. However the particularities of national language are not dependently and causally tied to the ethnic culture as an entirety of spiritual activities, production activities and social behaviors, unless we are to exploit certain particular lexicon which express the exotic custom of ethnic groups as arguments for testing the postulation of LR (yet this is actually not the indispensable argument for testing and proving LR). Hence the demarcation line discussed here should be drawn also between language and culture.

  To maintain stringently the study of LR in its expository scope means that we can test and explain LR principle only within the range of language-related phenomena, pertinent to human speech-thinking mechanism. In this sense the purpose and the approach of LR study might be neatly specified as: LR study should and could explain why and how human language construes reality by building a LIW; how language conceives a linguistic vision of reality and thus shapes the human (prescientific) worldview, so that ordinary people will believe that they talk/think about the same objective world that they experience physically in everyday life; to which extent linguistic factors can influence on the mode of thinking, or even affect certain patterns of human behaviors.

  1.3 Formative influence of language on thinking

  About the expository scope of RL we should still face a crucial question: what is the thinking (thought) that LR attempt to deal with in its expository scope. This question has become even more pressing when the cognition is involved in debate on LR, since some researchers suspect whether we can differentiate “thought” from “conceptual structures (beyond language)” when discussing the relativity effect (Imai et al., 2010). Certainly it is not the task for LR study to give a general definition of thinking, nor to deal with all issues of human cognition; LR attempts only to explain: what we are talking about from the epistemological point of view, when advocating the language-shaped worldview and the formative influence of language on the mode of thinking?

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