Logic Essentials: How To Think Well

Enroll on Outschool, or contact me to set up a class for you, a small group, your school, a group of teachers, or a group of professionals (business, engineers, scientists, etc.).

We will learn aspects of logic fundamental to efficient, effective thinking — logic you need, logic you want, logic you have now found. On Outschool, this course is a brief intro to practical logic, but (not on Outschool) we could make it a longer course.

This is stuff everyone needs! Adult and child alike. The material we will learn is what we need not only for science but also for everyday life. It is not merely book-learning stuff. It will help you up your game in school, at work, and in life. After all, conceptual thinking is everywhere, in everything we turn our minds to to know, to value, and to interact with: friendship, fitness, wisdom, health, work, diet, and. more.

Where should you go to college? Where should you work? Is that person at work trustworthy? How do we avoid cancer? How do we fight cancer? What is cancer? Is that person really a friend? What is the best way to exercise? Do we even need it? What is sleep? Do we need it? What are the consequences of neglecting sleep? What is a dog, or a cat, or a horse? What should we do to best take care of a pet so we are true to its biological nature? And how should be best take care of ourselves?

We need to be able to think logically to help ourselves, help our friends, help our family, help at work, and help society. We need to think well to be the best we can be to be healthy and happy, and to help others be healthy and happy. How do we know if we are right? How do we know if our group of friends, our family, or our team at work are doing the right thing? What if we are wrong?

For the love of life and things good, we need to know! Logic guides us in how to know the truth and how to use that truth well.

Enroll on Outschool, or contact me to set up a class for you, a small group, your school, a group of teachers, or a group of professionals (business, engineers, scientists, etc.).

History, too, shows us the importance of logic by showing us the mistakes — everything from follies to destruction — that happened when people lacked or violated logic. And it shows us some of the greatness and beauty that happened when people were logical, i.e., true to reality.

Unlike what happens after some other logic courses, you will find yourself forever using what we cover in this course. This material is invaluable for anyone who will work in science, who will have a career — whether finance, parenting, philosophy, marketing, music, art, education, technology, particle physics — and who will need to think their way through problems and through life. That’s everyone! 🙂

We will use a combination of lecture, interactive discussion, Q&A, and in-class work. Be prepared to think, to learn, to take notes, and to have new horizons open up.

Enroll on Outschool, or contact me to set up a class for you, a small group, your school, a group of teachers, or a group of professionals (business, engineers, scientists, etc.).

Topics covered:

1. Logic: what it is and how we know it
2. Concretes & concepts: keeping it real, keeping it efficient
3. Definition: knowing what you are talking about
4. Classification: keeping your mind flexible, organized, and adaptable
5. Induction: drawing meaningful conclusions on your own; checking other people’s
6. Integration: making your knowledge useful

Tentative schedule:
Week 1: What is logic
aims of course; need for logic; what logic is; how we get the concept; how it developed through history; define thinking, truth, knowledge, understanding
Week 2: concretes and concepts
how we think; what a concept is; how we use them; some rules for forming concepts; basics of how we form concepts
Week 3: definitions
what a definition is; logical definitions vs. dictionary definitions; why they are important; how we use them; formulating definitions
Week 4: classification
what is classification; why it is important; how we use it in life and in science; some rules of classification
Week 5: induction
induction vs. deduction; how induction (i.e., generalization) works; how to do it right and how to make it work for you
Week 6: integration
what cognitive integration is: connecting to the big picture; why it is important (e.g., in wisdom); examples of how it is not practiced as much as it should be; examples of its use in science and life; advice on how to use it

Enroll on Outschool, or contact me to set up a class for you, a small group, your school, a group of teachers, or a group of professionals (business, engineers, scientists, etc.).

Note: this is a course on logic, so we need to be prepared to think about our thinking. And the material and methods could be taught to adults, business professionals, and scientists, too; it’s not just easy stuff for kids. 🙂

Let’s make sure we add to our education the things Martin Luther King, Jr. , Thomas Edison, and others say are important. Let’s make sure we have the best education we can get, so we can live the best life we can — for ourselves, our friends, our family, and our community.

“But educators at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health assert that memorization alone does not a scientist make — above all, students must be critical, creative thinkers who are honest and responsible with data. In order to train scientists as critical thinkers, the R3 Graduate Science Initiative was recently created in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology (MMI), led by director Gundula Bosch, Ph.D.” (from: https://biomedicalodyssey.blogs.hopkinsmedicine.org/2018/03/revolutionizing-with-r3-a-new-ph-d-program-seeks-to-train-scientists-as-critical-thinkers/)

“At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. … Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.” –Martin Luther King, Jr

“The present system does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than on observation. The result of accepting unrelated facts is the fostering of conservatism [in thinking]. It breeds fear, and from fear comes ignorance.” –Thomas Edison

“For their part, Casadevall and Bosch write that science education reform should result in scientists who are: (1) broadly interested, creative and self-directed, as were some scientists in the era of Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, and Linus Pauling; (2) versed in epistemology, sound research conduct and error analysis, according to the “3R” norms of good scientific practice—rigor, responsibility and reproducibility; (3) skilled in reasoning using mathematical, statistical and programming methods and able to tackle logical fallacies.” (from: https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/01/03/biomedical-science-education-reform-casadevall-bosch/)

Enroll on Outschool, or contact me to set up a class for you, a small group, your school, a group of teachers, or a group of professionals (business, engineers, scientists, etc.).