A Role for Formal Logic 
in I nformal Logic 

Courses 

~ark VVeinstein 
Hunter College 

The distinction between "formal" and "informal" logic 
is based upon an 'apparent distinction within the domain 
of logic itself: those areas of the discipline that utilize 
technical apparatus and those others involving problems 
that are predominantly dealt with in ordinary English. In 
the educational context, however, formal and informal 
logic courses are usually distinguished on the grounds that 
they have different roles to play in the college curriculum. 
The commonly held view of the matter is that formal logic 
courses are designed to teach the special subject matter 
of logic. I nformal logic courses, on the other hand, are 
perceived as providing those broad analytical skills that 
have a more general utility. These skills are believed to be 
basic to the acquisition of academic proficiency in the 
large spectrum of academic disciplines. 

At Hunter College, CUNY, where I have developed a 
Logical Thinking course over the past several years, logical 
Thinking courses are described as" designed to serve as a 
foundation for work in the various academic disciplines." 
Similar claims seem to lie at the heart of the proliferation 
of informal logic courses in colleges throughout the Unied 
States and Canada However, in the design of many of 
these courses, it is too often not realized that informal 
logic is in and of itself only minimally useful for the 
development of those skills central to proficiency in 
technical courses in the Sciences, Mathematics, Com-
puter Programming, Accounting, and the like. In other 
words, logical Thinking courses which are exclusively 
limited to teaching informal logic seem to be geared more 
towards helping students in the Humanities and Social 
Sciences, and do not have quite the same degree of 
usefulness for students interested in doing work in the 
more formal disciplines. Therefore, if logical Thinking 
courses are to really serve as a "foundation for work in the 
various academic disciplines," they need to also help 
develop the skills required to deal with technical voca-
bularies and the use of rigorous and careful procedures 
that define the Sciences, Mathematics, etc. And, in order 
to do so, it seems to me that the design of such courses 
must make room for "formal" logic in addition to the 
"informal" logic that generally completely exhausts the 
eburse content. 

13 

In this paper, I will briefly outline the design of ~ 
logical Thinking course which I have developed at-H unter 
College. I n order to address the basic needs of students in 
the different academic disciplines, this course offering 
includes formal logic in its content. I n giving an account of 
this course, I will make a special note of the different sorts 
of needs that must be addressed by courses which claim 
to teach the basic skills, including those of reasoning, 
analysis and critical thinking in the different educational 
fields of study. I n doing so, I will examine the reasons why 
teaching formal logic must not be viewed simply as 
teaching a specialized subject with no generalizable 
applicability; that, on the contrary, formal logic could play 
an important role in easing the process of initiation into 
the more technical and rigorous disciplines. Note, how-
ever, that I am not recommending that formal logic be 
taught for its own sake. Rather, I am urging that this formal 
discipline be used in such a way as to generate basic skills 
and attitudes needed for the study of the more difficult 
technical matter of the scientific and mathematical 
disciplines. 

II 

The logical Thinking course that I have developed 
follows a fairly standard procedure for roughly the first 
two thirds of the term. We use an informal logical text [1], 
and attempt to develop analytical skills through a dis-
cussion and writing based program. A noteworthy aspect 
emphasised in this section of the course is that in their 
examination of arguments, students are encouraged to 
write brief analytical essays. Rather than merely clas-
sifying fallacies, students are asked to analyse examples 
and give arguments as to the contextual considerations 
that would support or defeat a charge of fallacy. 

The main area of innovation in the course, however, 
is to be traced to the use of elements of formal logic to 
develop and fashion in a self-conscious way skills required 
for learning technical subjects. And, in teaching these 
formal elements, a special attempt is made to guide and 
help students with the problems of maintaining a level of 
concentration commensurate with the difficulty of the 
class material, taking careful notes and reorganizing and 
studying from class notes. Along with these basic class-
room issues and others involving learning from technical 
texts, reading slowly enough for comprehension, the use 
of underlines and marginal notes, the careful serial deve-
lopment of required skills and the close attention to 
exercises and the performance of required tasks on 
demand. The insight governing this approach is that when 
taking technical courses, students who are deficient in 
these basic classroom skills as well as in the skills of 
analysis have to deal with their deficiencies within the 
context of intrinsically difficult subject matters. And the 
student cannot distinguish problems that are the result of 
basic skills deficits as distinguished from the difficulties 
ariSing from issue related to the inherent complexities 
within the subject at hand. It seems to me that even at the 
beginners level, college courses in Math and Science 
required conceptual abilities that are far in excess of those 
demanded in the learning of portions of elementary 
formal logic. 



Logic, in its formal aspect, as tau~ht at the elem~.~­
tary level, is without a doubt the most simple and obvious 
of the technical disciplines. Beginning courses in Mathe-
matics, Physics, Geology or Calculus, all require more 
specialized skills than those demanded in the learning of 
truth tables, term logic or elementary set theory. Formal 
logic is thus ideal for developing generalizable tech-
niques available to the technical subject areas. Logic is 
particularly appropriate, when the course design uses 
formal elements, as a device for coming to grips with 
fundamental problems of learning unfamiliar but highly 
coherent subject matters. Furthermore, my experience 
with such a course design reveals that basic technical skills 
development is consistent with learning a respectable 
amount of logic and elementary meta-mathematics, all 
within the framework of a course wehre two-thirds of the 
class time is spent in acquiring the linguistic skills required 
for sound critical thinking. 

The design of the formal aspect of the course divides 
the student's task into two Independent but related 
procedures. Starting at mid-semester, and in addition to 
their work in informal logic, the students are asked to 
begin working through a programmed logic text. [2] 
Students are expected to finish the first two sections by 
the end of the semester. (Better students complete the 
entire book for extra credit.) Students do the programmed 
text at home, at their own pace, and with no formal 
assistance within the class. The assignment of the pro-
grammed text is timed so that students have truth tables 
within their repertoire when we begin the last third of the 
course, and are working with Predicate Logic as we are 
completing the final segment of the course. 

During the last third of the semester, I teach seg-
ments of term logic, using a lecture format. What is most 
crucial is that this material is taught with no supporting 
text. Students can only learn the material by attending 
class, by maintaininga high level of attention and by taking 
careful notes. I teach an artificially mathematized version 
of term logic. So, for example, the square of opposition is 
taught with truth value functions. Definitions are given in 
mathematical style. Relationships are presented formally 
as holding between unordered and ordered pairs. To 
classify categorical propositions, I use elementary ma-
trices. The matter of existential presupposition and the 
shift into Boolean Algebra is treated within a set theoretic 
context. Students are asked to prove elementary 
theorems in set theory, using truth tables in intuitive ways. 
But, again, what is crucial to the whole process is that by 
not using a text, students are forced to confront their 
inability to learn from a teacher. Notice: what we are doing 
here is artificially isolating a very significant variable. By 
not having the support of a text, the student is forced to 
face his inability to sustain attention, maintain an ade-
quate level of concentration, and take careful notes. Thus, 
the absence of a text forces the student to get the material 
through a classroom process. Information must be com-
piled in the form of class notes. By the end ofthe semester, 
a student will have completed a notebook in term logic 
and set theory. This notebook constitutes one of the major 
tasks for this segment of the semester. The notebook is the 
result of rewriting and reorganizing the classroom notes 
on a regular basis. The criterion of adequacy for the 
notebook is that it permits someone uninitiated in the dis-
cipline to learn it from the student's notes. 

During this segment of the semester, the students take 

14 

quizzes frequently, as a corrective to the process of 
learning in the classroom. These exams, although used in 
part for grading, have as their main function that of calling 
the attention of students to the problems of compiling, 
organizing and retaining classroom lecture materials. The 
work covered in class, in conjunction with homework 
assignments, is sufficient, if properly managed, for 
excellence in the quizzes. The quizzes thus afford the 
student a probe into his adequacy at the task of class-
room learning. Homework assignments are similarly con-
structed to force the student to come to grips with short-
comings. Assignments cannot be handled unless the 
student has adequately accurate notes. Again, this is cru-
cial. Thus, the lack of a supporting text compels the 
student to adequately compile class lectures if he is to do 
the required work at all. This prevents, among other 
things, the self-defeating practice, common to students 
who have only a poor conceptual grasp of abstract 
material and tasks, of using text book examplars to 
dummy up approximations of correct work in doing text 
book exercises. 

At the end of the semester, the students take a final 
exam on the material in the programmed logic text. The 
examination is structured progressively, designed such 
that all students can answer some questions in each of the 
areas covered in the tel(t. But questions become difficult 
fairly rapidly so that only the very best students can 
answer all of the el(am questions. Performance on the 
el(ams is fairly indicatrve of how much has really been 
learned from the tel(t - governed only by the students' 
own sense of responsibility and their awareness that the 
task must be completed by the semester's end. Needless 
to say, the amount of material actually mastered varies 
widely within a class. But this is crucial information for the 
student. The student has a measure of his own effecti-
veness as a reader of technical material and as a learner of 
rigourous techniques. 

This Logical Thinking course gives the students a 
thorough introduction to the techniques and processes of 
informal logic. They learn discussion as well as writing 
skills. In addition, they become familiar with useful 
fragments of modern logic and confront a style of mathe-
matical prose that is common to many technical areas. 
But, most importantly, students learn these formal ele-
ments in a fashion that enables them t6 focus on the 
process through which they learn other technical sub-
jects. They are forced to sustain attention and to represent 
a course correctly in their notes, compile these notes in an 
adequate fashion and perform related tasks requiring the 
memorization of elements and processes. They also work 
through a tel(t in an alien and, perhaps, non-intuitive 
subject matter. They use this material in a theoretic 
fashion, since an effort is made throughout to use truth 
tables and quantified el(pressions, whenever possible in 
metalinguistic formulations of term logic and set theory. 
Students not only get this material, but they get it through 
seeing it applied within an inherently elementary subject 
matter, and in comprehensible ways. Again, since these 
concepts are only available through the compilation and 
organization of classroom material, these materials, if 
learned at all, are, of necessity, learned with compre-
hensiveness and clarity. 



Needless to say, the course as I teach it requires a 
commitment to tutoring individual students. But what is 
surprising is that if the homework assignments and 
quizzes are carefully developed, most students learn the 
material with no special assistance; and, this in classes of 
students in their first year of college and including many 
with impoverished high school backgrounds and a host of 
intellectual and socio-cultural problems. The students 
learn logic through coming to grips with the logic of 
learning the technical disciplines in an artificiallly en-
hanced but fairly standard undergraduate setting. 

III 

The main contention of this paper has been that 
the elements of formal logic, if carefully presented, are 
useful for teaching a wide range of skills required for the 
learning of technical subject matter. Notice: I am not 
claiming that teaching formallogic1s the only way to teach 
those skills. Just as informal logic affords a useful and 
available tool for teaching critical thinking, so formal logic 
affords a useful and available tool for basic techniques re-
quired for learning technical ~ubject matter. Critical thinking 
skills can be taught through a wide variety of courses: 
history, literature and general philosophy courses, just to 
mention a few obvious cases. It is the claim of advocates 
of informal logic that informal logic courses can also teach 
critical thinking, but teach it in a more effective way. The 
basic skills of formal analysis can also be taught in a wide 
variety of courses. It is my claim that elements of formal 
logic, if properly presented, can be a device for teaching 
these technical basic skills in a maximally effective and 
self conscious way. 

Notes 

1. Kahane, Howard, Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric, 
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1980, 3rd Edition. 
2. I use Schagrin, Morton L., The Language of Logic, New 
York: Random House, 1979. 0-

15 

response 

Why Be Charitable? 

Jonathan E. Adler 
Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y. 

I~ "Ch~rity Begi~s at Home," Ralph Johnson [1], fol-
lOWing MIchael Scnven [2], proposes as the Principle of 
Charity that: 

... the critic should provide the best possible inter-
pretation of the material under consideration. 

Johnson takes the primary justification for this principle 
to be ethical: "One is under the general obligation to be 
f~ir ~n one'~ dealing. with ?ther~ ... " A secondary justi-
fIcatIon, again follOWing Scrrven, IS prudential: 

. .. you want to interpret the argument's meaning in 
whatever way makes the most sense and force out of 
it, because otherwise, it can easily be reformulated 
slightly in order to meet your objections. 

My question about this pattern of justification for the 
Pri~ciple of Charity is epistemological: Johnson and 
Scnven appear to be viewing the analysis and evaluation 
?f ~rguments as essentially pragmatic, rather than ob-
Jt;c~lve (I~ss context-r~lative, as a rought implication). In 
gIVing pnmacy to faIrness to others, and placing the 
secondary prudential justificaiton in a debate-like con-
text, they are using' ,argument" in its familiar rather than 
technical sense. Can one find a justification for the 
Principle of Charity that fits with a more technical sense of 
argument, or a less rhetorical understanding of argument? 
Behind my main question is a more general one: can one 
provide an account of informal logic that unifies it with the 
theory of (cognitive) inquiry or methodology? 

Broadly speaking, (cognitive) inquiry is aimed at com-
prehensive truth. We know from Peirce, Dewey and 
oth.ers that taking this aim seriously we can draw impli-
catl(;ms for the preferential forms inquiry shoud take. In 
partIcular, the public availability of hyotheses and data, 
open discussion and criticism, a community of inquiries 
shari~~ mutual resp~ct, and s? on, are among the optimal 
cond~tlons for reaching that aIm. What is most promising 
here IS that this pattern of justification allows us to ground 
both the methodology and ethics of our teaching and 
investigating a problem in similar terms. We show these 
practices as promoting our general aim, rather than 
motivated by political, economical, prudential or even 
arbitrary reasons. I take it that we would prefer the former 
"internal" to the latter "external" justifications. We would