Logic
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What is logic?
Logic is the discipline that studies the structures of thought and the principles that allow us to distinguish correct reasoning from incorrect reasoning. It studies the rules of valid reasoning. Without it, philosophy would be only subjective opinion.
Logic is concerned with the study of the principles of valid inference and correct reason. It does not focus on what is true about the world (that is the task of metaphysics or science), but on how we arrive at valid conclusions from certain premises. It is, essentially, the tool for rigorous reasoning.
Why do we talk about logic here?
It is simple: so that we can develop critical thinking, learn to recognize truths from lies, and not allow even ourselves to lie to ourselves.
To develop critical thinking, one needs the tools that logic provides.
In which situations is logic useful, and in which is it not?
Logic is useful in any situation in which we have to analyze topics with seriousness and rigor so as not to be mistaken. These examples include: your own life, work, your studies, your relationships, conversations with people/friends/relatives in which it matters to reach a high percentage of truth.
It is also useful for analyzing the thousands of news items and pieces of information we are exposed to every day and for verifying their validity and truth.
By contrast, when the interest of a conversation or topic is centered on winning at any cost, including with lies, logic is sidelined, because those people use dialectic, debate techniques, deception, create confusion, and relativize everything to each person’s subjective feeling in order to win (as the sophists did, whom we will analyze later). In these situations, applying logic is counterproductive because there is no intention of arriving at the truth. In these situations the discussion must be centered on demonstrations, concrete facts, and real statistics. Here we automatically pass from logic to the sciences: biology, history, economics, statistics, etc.
Historical facts and hard data from real statistics cannot be relativized; about facts there are no debates, no dialectic, no confusion.
For example, if from one year to the next poverty or crime fell, there is no discussion: real statistics kill the subjective feeling. Does this data mean that poverty or crime no longer exists? The answer is no, but there is an improvement. Measurement with statistics has as its mission to give an idea of the trend, to know whether things are worse or better than before.
That said, there are several things that should be known about logic, which we will show below.
Which topics of logic we will cover on this site
Logic has several branches; on this site we will only analyze:
- of Formal Logic and Classical Logic, only the main concepts
- of Informal Logic, we will try to go as deep as possible.
Branches of logic
- Informal logic → analyzes arguments in natural language, fallacies, rhetoric, etc.
- Classical logic → the most common (principle of the excluded middle and non-contradiction).
- Formal logic → studies the structure of reasoning using artificial languages (symbols). Example: propositional logic and predicate logic.
- Non-classical logics → intuitionistic logic, modal logic, paraconsistent logic, fuzzy logic, etc.
- Mathematical logic → includes proof theory, model theory, computability theory, and set theory.
What our logic course includes
Required pages
The content of these pages is summarized and shows what is necessary and main to understand logic in the context of our site.
Optional pages
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Categories: Home -> Philosophy
Last updated: 2025-12-10
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