The GRE's and Logic

A friend of mine too the GRE this past saturday, and her "argumentative" essay question was pretty fascinating for us budding logicians. I'll briefly explain the argument, and go from there.

To condense the prompt, the argument is as follows:

P1. If you give students less homework, they will get better grades.
P2 The students got better grades.
Conclusion. It was because the students received less homework.


Now, that is the fallacy of affirming the consequent, which we all know is a big no-no. But, what are we to do when we come across arguments that are formally invalid? Well, I was speaking to Matt after class today, and he suggested that the next step is to allow for intellectual charity and try to help revise the argument in a way that makes sense.

I'm not sure where I was going with this post, but I found it interesting for the course!

Determining True Premises

One of the really wonderful things about formal logic is that when the argument is structured properly, and the premises are true, we can believe with great amounts of confidence that the argument is valid and therefore the answer is true. However, there is the problem of the premises themselves.

How, exactly, are we to determine whether or not a given premise is true? I mean, we can't really use Formal Logic and deductively prove a premise; that would just exponentiate the problem. Is there a particular means in logic to show that a given premise is actually true? If there isn't, what hope do we have of learning anything about the world from Formal Logic?

The Inclusive "Or"

I found it really fascinating in our class experience that the "Or" function can also include both ideas. for example PvQ could also be P and Q. Why exactly do we use that function and what sense does it really make? Obviously, it make's DeMorgan's make sense, but it seems like there must be an actual reason for the inclusion.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the ancient Greek Stoics used the "Or" function in the exclusive, and it seems that modern English language conventions do the same. So, why the change?

The Merits of Logic

Wednesday in class we discussed the benefits of being able to take a given piece of text, then diagram the argument in a way that the premises flow, in order, to the conclusion. Overall we determined the benefits of applying logic to issues outside of deductive formal proofs.

However, I have a different question to ask.

Is there a way to reap the benefits to organizing formal proofs in everyday, non-philosophy classroom discussion? Do the rules of logical inference, the structure of the arguments, and formal (as opposed to informal) fallacies benefit the rest of our studies in college? I'm not sure of an answer, but I'd love to hear what you all have to say.

Only Inductive Logic?

I really want to ask an open ended question that I really don't have an answer to myself, but here goes. Do you think that there may be some questions that cannot be answered deductively and can only be answered inductively? We briefly touched upon this in class, and what was said is that our knowledge may be limited, and therefore our arguments are only inductive under lack of sufficient evidence.


However, I have another example--the Judeo/Christian god. Some, such as Anselm and Aquinas would argue that the existence of God can be proved deductively. However, what if this isn't the case? If this god exists (and I'm not making the claim one way or the other) wouldn't the role of faith be important, and therefore the use of deductive logic would be moot since God would be unknowable without faith? I'm not sure as to an answer, but I find it interesting indeed.

Arguments for Latin American-US Differences

I'm currently the TA for a class on Latin America and United States relations. Since we're in the introductory stages of the class, we're looking at why the United States and the nations of Latin America have developed differently.

One of the arguments proposed is this: Since the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America, and since Catholicism is authoritarian by nature, and democracy requires egalitarianism, the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while the United States had democratic ones.


Now, that's quite the mouthful of an argument, and I think considering the circumstances at hand, it makes a lot of sense. I chose this argument hoping to diagram it, but I'm not sure if I'm able to do it here. Lets see if I can tease it out.


I think our conclusion is 4)
   the Latin American countries generally had authoritarian leaders because of their Catholicism while      the United States had democratic ones.

But, how do we get there? I think that maybe we need to start with 2) Catholicism is authoritarian by nature and what follows from that is 1) the Latin American populations were Catholic as opposed to Protestant like in America

On the other side we have the statement as a stand alone which is 3) democracy requires egalitarianism.


Overall, we have 1) follows from 2) which, in conjunction with 3) comes to our conclusion 4)

Not sure if I structured this right, but give it a look!

The Real Meaning

I was having a conversation with Jondavid earlier today and we were discussing some pretty interesting issues, chiefly among them the idea of a religion and its figures as literature. As he said to me, and I'm paraphrasing, "If religion was really who has the best literary figure to follow, we'd see more Gandalfism than we do current." I think he has a point here; if religion is literature, albeit very powerful literature, what is its meaning?

I guess I'm still in the camp that it has no meaning if this is the case. As a Catholic I really believe that Jesus performed miracles, was crucified for our sins and was raised from the dead. Also, I actually believed he established a hierarchical Church here on Earth. This has no meaning if Jesus is only a strong literary figure. Rather, since I believe these to be true, metaphysical claims, it makes all the difference in the world. My faith is shaped by the implications of these truths not just here, but in all of reality.

I'm not convinced that as literature, Christianity has any of the meaning it does if it is literally true.