When someone who was attending his school said to him, ‘Convince me of the usefulness of logic,’ he replied: Would you like me to demonstrate it to you?—‘Yes.’ —Then I must employ a demonstrative argument? And when the questioner agreed, he asked: How will you know, then, whether I’m trying to mislead you with a sophism? The man offered no reply. So do you see, continued Epictetus, how you yourself are conceding that logic is necessary, since without it you can’t even tell whether it is necessary or not?
Whenever I am teaching student in the College of Stoic Philosophers and we get to the module on logic, the main idea I want them to grasp is the need for them to learn how to critically think. Being an expert in Stoic logic can be useful, but the real goal of learning logic is to critically think. Do Stoic need to know everything about Stoic logic? No. Rather, I would suggest people spend time thinking about logical errors, how an argument is composed and how to evaluate arguments.
If you want to learn on your own, I would suggest you find the book entitled “A Rulebook for Arguments” by Anthony Weston. Another excellent resource on the internet is yourlogicalfallacyis.org. This is a great resource for learning various ways people fail in logic or critical thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment