Talk:Logic

Misleading Description[change source]

"Logic is the science of reasoning. Logic helps people decide whether something is true or false."

This sentence is not exactly true, especially when pertaining to philosophical logic. We should clarify and make distinctions between the categories of logic in question. 69.146.36.35 17:24, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But would that be simple enough for this site? -Razorflame (contributions) Talk 17:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above user is right, that's a false sentence about the nature of Logic. It would be better to have "Logic is the study of valid argument and proper inference." Even if you want to simplify this somehow, you should never simplify an article down to the point where you're actually stating false sentences, like the one that currently appears in the article. Addem (talk) 21:40, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Logic is the study of reasoning. (That's one and only one task of logic.) The rules of logic let philosophers make true and logical deductions about the world. (Not only philosophers. Not "true", rather "valid", more specifically: valid in that logic. And what is a "logical deduction"? Better: "valid deductions". But: There aren't only deductive logics, so better: inferences. And: Not necessarily about the world. In fact, most propositions of logic are just about logics.) helps people decide whether something is true or false. (Well, no: To decide if something is true is more an empirical task. Logic only decides if something is true given the truth of something else, i.e. hypothetical truth) GhulOfKrakau (talk) 11:17, 18 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Syllogism[change source]

We should make it clear that a syllogism is just one example of a type of reasoning that Logic studies. Other types of reasoning are not necessarily deductive but can also be inductive, as we do in the Sciences--and yet these still fall within the umbrella of Logic. Addem (talk) 21:43, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editing the writing in the symbolic logic section[change source]

The wording used in the section on symbolic logic should be improved. For instances we should have "∧ is read as 'and', which means that both sentences are true."

Also, the use of the → should come with a link to the topic of the conditional, because there is a lot of important subtlety about how that is used and interpreted (particularly in confusion between the material and indicative conditionals).

Also, we shouldn't say "those talking about logic talk about statements," for a couple reasons. First, when talking about logic you are not necessarily talking about sentences but relationships between sentences and those who express them. Secondly, there is a bit of unsettled controversy around whether Logic concerns sentences or propositions, which differ philosophically. Therefore we should change this to "Logic concerns the relationships between sentences or propositions, and the people who express these things."

Addem (talk) 21:57, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Uses[change source]

We should fix the sentence "People who study math create proofs that use logic to show that math facts are correct," to instead read "Mathematicians use proofs to demonstrate mathematical facts." The original wording, particularly the use of "math facts", is un-academic. Addem (talk) 21:58, 26 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]