Logic

Let him once gain this habit of method, of starting from fixed points, of making his ground good as he goes, of distinguishing what he knows from what he does not know, and I conceive he will be gradually initiated into the largest and truest philosophical views, and will feel nothing but impatience and disgust at the random theories and imposing sophistries and dashing paradoxes, which carry away half-formed and superficial intellects.
  -  John Henry Cardinal Newman
           
"Nothing comes easy for man, not even thinking."  (A sort of generous  translation/paraphrase from St. Thomas's prologue to his commentary on Aristotle's  Posterior Analytics.)  While animals are born with the instincts they need to perform their  life activities with excellence, men have to use thought, diligence and practice to do  almost anything well.  This is true even for his most natural activity, thinking.  Logic is the  art that teaches us how to move beyond the muddle-headed, opinion-asserting mode  natural to us to achieve clarity, precision and ultimately certain knowledge.
                                   
The Art of Logic gives the ability to present ideas in an ordered, connected way that leads necessarily from starting points to conclusions.  Minds trained in Logic also recognize faulty reasoning in others.  Shallowness of thought dominates our culture and leads contemporary society to foolish and dangerous measures.  Training in Logic leads students to insist on making explicit the reasons that lie behind what people are saying, and to be able to identify their own reasons or lack thereof for positions they want to maintain.

The formal study of Logic centers on the different kinds of reasoning processes that men are capable of and the force of each kind.  Probable, likely, plausible and possible reasons are distinguished from the necessary.  The different errors in reasoning, sometimes difficult to discern, are identified.

Formal Logic studies the proper and improper ways conclusions are drawn from  premises; Material Logic studies the premises themselves.  What do our premises have  to be like in order to turn clarity of argument into objective knowledge?  How do we arrive  at proper definitions of terms?  How do we distinguish certainly known truths from the  assertions of opinion?

Section Topics

Trivium Overview

Grammar

Logic

Rhetoric

Trivium Resources