The Logic of Deep Disagreements

The best evidence of the growing importance of the informal logic movement is the alarm it is causing in older and more conservative circles. Many think that something bad has happenned when truth tables, Centzen rules for natural deduction, and multiply general propositions in prenex normal form are replaced by a mixed and inchoate system of techniques which, among other things, do not easily admit of machine grading. Now the informal logic movement is certainly diverse and loose jointed, but one thing that holds it together is a strong pedagogical commitment. The fundamental task of logic in a college curriculum is to develop skills and techniques for the critical evaluation and coherent presentation of arguments. Negatively, it is held that formal logic, as it has commonly been taught, has not fulfilled this function. Of course, the disagreements here are not merely pedagogical. The philosophy of ordinary language still has its influence and, as a result, many still hold that the techniques of modern symbolic logic are inadequate to the richness / subtlety / and power of ordi nary language. Its application distorts more than it illuminates. My own view, for what it is worth / is that the methods of formal logic can be profitably used to explicate such fundamental notions as validity, logical form, tautologies, contradictions/ etc. These techniques are of little use in the direct evaluation of actual arguments beyond the simplest level of complexity. But this is not what Dartmouth College