Enhancing Logical Thinking: Practical Steps and Resources

Writing down thoughts and studying logic enhance clear reasoning and understanding.

### Enhancing Logical Thinking: Practical Steps and Resources
* 🧠 "The life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since **reason more than anything else is man**."
* 📓 To think more logically, start by writing down your thoughts, which helps **clarify and analyze your beliefs and intentions**. This practice can lead to a **deeper understanding of your own reasoning processes** and **improve memory retention**.
* 📚 The second practical step is to study logic, which teaches the **evaluation of thoughts and arguments based on established rules of reasoning**. Logic serves as both a **science and an art**, aiding in the pursuit of truth by demanding **clear definitions and sound arguments**.
* 🔍 Logic is defined as the **analysis and appraisal of arguments**, with its foundations traced back to ancient philosophers like Aristotle, who formalized the **laws of logic**. The classical laws include the **law of non-contradiction**, the **law of identity**, and the **law of excluded middle**, which are essential for logical reasoning.
* 📝 For effective study, maintain a **scratchbook for practicing logic problems**, and create a **commonplace book to compile key terms, definitions, and fallacies** to reinforce your learning.
* 📖 Recommended readings include *Being Logical* by D.Q. McInerny and *The Art of Reasoning* by David Kelley, both of which provide **clear introductions to the discipline of logic**.
* 🔗 Additionally, consider using interactive platforms like Brilliant for a **hands-on approach to learning logic and mathematics**, which can greatly **enhance your understanding and application of logical principles**.
* 💡 Finally, engage in writing your own arguments to evaluate your reasoning, allowing for **self-reflection and improvement in logical thinking**.

The life according to reason is best and pleasantest, since reason more than anything else is man. This life therefore is also the happiest. - Nicomachean Ethics, Book 10. Hey, welcome to Park Notes. I'm Parker Setticase, I'm a graduate student in philosophy and this is a

channel where I help you study and think more deeply. In this video I'm going to help you think more logically. I'll give you two very, very practical steps early on so you can just grab onto those. I'm going to dive just a little bit deep

into the nature of logic, the metaphysics of logic, modal logic, the philosophy of logic, philosophical logic, just just a little bit. Not it's not going to be that bad. I'll touch on an argument for God's existence from the metaphysics of logic, but then I'm going to get back into an

intro and overview to logical thinking and I'll leave you with a lot of book recommendations for you to get started with logic today. I'll recommend two types of notebooks that you should start keeping as you study logic, and maybe a third notebook to help you collect your

thoughts. This video is sponsored by Brilliant, but more on that later. We've got a lot to cover so let's jump right in. So when it comes to thinking more logically, I got two practical steps for you. They're really simple, they're really easy, they may be super

obvious, but sometimes we miss the obvious stuff. So step one: write down your thoughts. It's that simple. Writing down your thoughts forces you to clearly express what you're thinking. Writing down your thoughts makes you analyze what you're thinking while you're thinking it. It makes you face your

thoughts head on this is what I actually believe and think and it actually helps you formulate your thoughts maybe your thoughts aren't as clear as you thought maybe they're vague or ambiguous the act of writing them down can help your thoughts take form so I recommend you

dedicate an entire notebook just to your own thoughts this is my deep thinking philosophy Journal I bring this notebook this journal with me to the coffee shop and I tried to formulate my thoughts to see how far I can go on my own steam this process has helped me clarify my

thoughts help me get clear on what I mean what do I intend to say what am I actually saying am I really saying what I think I'm saying and on top of that it helps me remember my thoughts so I can come back to them and pick up where I

left off so the first step to thinking more logically is to write down your thoughts the second practical step is super easy it's start studying logic once you have your thoughts down on paper you can begin evaluating them and that's precisely what the discipline of

logic teaches us to do to evaluate our thoughts our ideas our arguments according to the right rules of reason of logic now logic according to one of my favorite logicians Harry Gendler is the analysis and appraisal of arguments now an argument is a manifestation of

the reasoning process that's a quote by another favorite logician of mine D.Q. McInerny but that's just one definition I have a commonplace book for logic where I collect a lot of different definitions so let's try a few on logic studies forms of reasoning when you do logic you

try to clarify reasoning and separate good from bad reasoning. Logic is about clear and effective thinking. It is a science and an art. Logic is to philosophy what telescopes are to astronomy or microscopes to biology or math to physics. Logic helps us find

truth, though it is not sufficient of itself to find truth. Truth, it helps us especially in two ways: one, by demanding that we define our terms so that we understand what we mean; and two, by demanding that we give good reasons, arguments, proofs. Logic is the science of necessary inference. Logic is the art of using

reason well in our inquiries after truth and the communication of it to others. Now, the design of logic is to teach us the right use of our reason or intellectual powers and the improvement of them in ourselves and others. The whole purpose of reasoning, of logic, is

to arrive at the truth of things. So those are just a few extra ones for you. I think we're getting a sense that logic is a skill, a science, and an art. It's the skill of right reasoning that you can get better at as you work to become more logical, to

memorize more arguments, to evaluate your own arguments. It's a skill you can grow in. It's a science; you can discover the laws of logic out there in the world. You can discover the form of right reasoning and utilize well-worn arguments in the

history of philosophy. You can evaluate the very process itself. And it's an art because the reasoner can be creative in developing, evaluating, and giving their own arguments. So logic is the analysis and appraisal of arguments. An argument is a manifestation of the reasoning process, and it's a skill, a science, and

an art so if you want to think more logically one write down your thoughts two start studying logic and start evaluating the thoughts that you've written down it's pretty much that simple but on this channel I help you study and think more deeply so I have to

say a little bit about the foundation of logic metalogic philosophical logic the philosophy of logic what is this thing we call logic well according to Harry Gendler logic began in the year 1 Million BC with Fred Flintstone he says Fred Flintstone is the first to put a

valid argument into words if I hide then the saber-tooth tigers will not eat me I will hide so they will not eat me boom logical reasoning is born but more seriously Gendler traces it back to 600 to 400 BC with ancient Greek

philosophers like Pythagoras and others who prove geometric theorems Heraclitus and Parmenides who dispute the law of non-contradiction Zeno and others who reason about philosophical paradoxes and the sophists who debate about politics he traces it through Plato and Socrates

down to Aristotle who many consider to be the father of logic in that he's the first to formalize it and give an accounting of the laws of logic this book by the way is the A to Z of logic I highly recommend it it's by Harry

Gendler fantastic book but what are the laws of logic the three laws of classical logic are the law of non-contradiction which was formerly the law of contradiction but now we call it the law of non-contradiction the law of

identity and the law of excluded middle there are some who claim that the classical laws of logic are not really that classical but only really trace back to the late 1800s early 1900s with Gottlob Frege Bertrand Russell and Alfred

North Whitehead but I don't know I think we can find the law of noncontradiction at least in Aristotle's metaphysics especially book Gamma I believe yeah book Gamma but that's okay let's ignore the debates right now and just assume these are the classical laws of logic

that they really do go back in time and let me just lay them out for you the law of non-contradiction says not both a and not a that's a symbol for and and that's that squiggle is the symbol for negation so not both a and not a at the same time

in the same way that is nothing is both true and false at the same time in the same way the law of non-contradiction the law of identity says a equals a a is a a thing is a thing it's such a simple law that it's almost hard to it's almost

hard to explain just a thing is a thing a is a and then the law of excluded middle a or not a think of that v as like a versus so either a is true or not a is true and it's not possible to be between these two a proposition isn't

like half true in between floating in and out of truth or existence so those are the classical laws of logic and they're a pretty big deal The prominent panpsychist philosopher Philip Goff thinks the laws of logic are so important that he gives a logic

constraint on metaphysical theorizing that is to say every good metaphysical theory must account for the laws of logic and he says that the logic constraint has two aspects the metaphysical aspect and the epistemological aspect according to Goof the metaphysical aspect says the

metaphysician is obliged to postulate entities sufficient to ground the truth of the laws of logic so in your metaphysical theorizing you have to make room you have to account you have to be able to ground the laws of logic say what they are they're that important and

two the epistemological aspect of the logic constraint says the metaphysician is obliged to account for our knowledge of the laws of logic so it's not enough just to make room for them to account for them to ground them in your metaphysics you must also give an

accounting of how we know about the laws of logic epistemology just comes from the two Greek words epistem and logos a word about knowledge the study of knowledge I know we're getting a little heady here I'm almost done philosophers James J Anderson and Greg Welty in an

attempt to make sense of the laws of logic to ground them in their metaphysical theory give an argument called the Lord of non-contradiction where they try to ground the logical laws in the mind of God their argument runs like this the laws of logic are

truths the laws of logic are truths about truths I don't know why it's so hard to say truths the laws of logic are necessary truths that is they're true in every possible world there's no way that a and not a could both exist in the same

way in the same time the laws of logic really exist the laws of logic necessarily exist the laws of logic are non-physical the laws of logic are thoughts and therefore there must be a non-physical spiritual mind to ground the laws of logic because no physical entity exists

necessarily philosopher Alex Malpass summarizes their argument as follows one if a thought exists necessarily then it belongs to a necessarily existing mind two the laws of logic are necessarily existing thoughts three therefore there is a necessarily existent mind AKA God now Malpass is an atheist

philosopher himself Welty and Anderson are Christian theist philosophers and I actually had James Anderson and Alex Malpass on my podcast Parker's Pens to debate this argument the Law of Non-Contradiction so you can find that link somewhere up here if you guys are

interested in seeing how the laws of logic are supposed to be grounded in God's mind and to hear Alex Malpass argue against that argument but enough metaphysics let's get back to logic all right so let's get back to some tips for

studying logic I'm going to give you guys some book recommendations and some other tips but before I do that I want to tell you about a free and easy way to start learning logic today that is my sponsor for this video brilliant brilliant is the best way to learn math

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at my own pace now I've been taking a course on large language models as well as computer science but I recently found this other course on logic it's composed of 18 lessons with 10 practices which will help you get your feet wet learning logic and practicing what you've learned

immediately I really love Brilliant and I think you're going to love it too and right now my Park Notes audience gets a 30-day free trial and the first 200 subscribers get 20% off Brilliant's annual premium subscription by using my link brilliant.org/parkes that's

brilliant.org/parkes you can find the link in the description or in the pin comment so I recommend taking advantage of that Brill deal but let me give you some more book recommendations to help you on your logic journey first up is *Being Logical* by D.Q. McInerny I love

this book it's really helpful it's really short it's a great overview and introduction to the first-order discipline of logic next up and even more concise is *A Rulebook for Arguments* the fourth edition by Anthony Weston this is like a short little

compendium on logic and argumentation I also recommend *The Little Logic Book* another really helpful intro just going to be a little bit thicker and this one's not strictly logic but *The Philosopher's Toolkit* is a compendium of philosophical concepts and methods by Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl this book

is fantastic for getting your grip on the discipline of philosophy more generally and it has very good information on logic specifically if you were going to grab one book I'd probably grab this one so those are all going to be introduction books now if you want to

go just a little bit deeper I recommend these intro to logic books the first one by Harry Gensler I have the second edition I'm not sure how many there are but if you grab this book you're going to learn logic Harry Gensler is the man I

really appreciate his work another really good one especially for my Christian friends is Vern Poythress's book Logic: A God-Centered Approach to the Foundations of Western Thought Dr. Poythress got his PhD in mathematics from Harvard I believe so many people will know him as a theologian but he's got his logic

chops as well now I really appreciate that he goes in depth on the names of the arguments like Celarent and all these medieval names for different arguments probably my favorite intro to logic textbook is The Art of Reasoning by David Kelley this one's very clear very concise

but very very thorough I wouldn't be showing you any of these books if I didn't recommend them if you were going to buy one of the textbooks I think I'd buy this one and then lastly Introduction to Logic by Irving Copi and

Carl Cohen this one's just a classic introduction to logic it's a very good book I have all these because I like to reference them the authors give different definitions they think differently about logic so it's nice to have multiple resources to pull from now

for the more advanced students I would recommend David Papineau's Philosophical Devices: Proofs, Probabilities, Possibilities, and Sets another really really good book especially if you're trying to become a philosopher you're going to have to learn sets and all these other mathematical terms which analytic

Philosophers use this today. This is a great book. Another one I'm working through right now is more precisely the math you need to do philosophy. Now, is this strictly speaking logic? Well, not really. It's math, but it's math that philosophers use in their philosophy.

papers. So if you want to understand modern analytic philosophy papers, you're going to need to learn the concepts in this book. Now if you want to go super duper deep into the philosophy of logic, like we talked about, there's this classical understanding of the laws of

logic. There are others who deny one or more of these classic laws of logic. If you want to learn about those debates, you're going to be stepping into philosophical logic, the philosophy of logic, metalogic. This contemporary introduction by John McFarland is very

good. In fact, every book in the Routledge contemporary introduction to philosophy is a very good book, so I highly recommend those if you want to dive deeper into philosophy. Another classic in the philosophy of logic is Susan Haack's *Philosophy of Logics*. This is kind of a

big deal that she put an 's' there. There's this whole debate whether we should be monists or pluralists about logic. Is there just one logic or are there many logics? She talks about that in this book, which is a classic and super fantastic. And then lastly, a book I've picked up

many times and have never finished: *Logic for Philosophy* by Theodore 'Ted' Sider. This book is super duper hard. I don't recommend it for anyone except analytic philosophers. I've had a very hard time actually getting through it, but I'm hoping this spring to just sit down and

read it cover to cover and download this stuff into my psyche so good luck if you end up reading this book so those are some book recommendations but we're not done yet I got three more tips for you next up get a scratchbook and practice practice practice logic is like language

you need repetition in order to understand the symbols get clear on the arguments and recognize the different forms of argumentation I think it's wise for you to have a book dedicated just to working through your logic problems plus if you keep them all in one place you

can go back and revisit them you can mark the ones that gave you more trouble than others and you can go back and revisit them work through them and become an expert so get yourself a scratchbook tip number three make your own logic commonplace book so I just

restarted my logic commonplace book I did have it over here in this one but this turned into my lifting log so now I'm moving all the definitions terms concepts difficult puzzles fallacies formal informal all back into my logic commonplace book so I have a one-stop

shop when I want to bone up on my logical terms and notations so the kinds of things you should put in your own logic commonplace book are key terms definitions from various authors so you can compare and contrast them the puzzles that were especially difficult

for you so you can study them and become an expert on them different forms of arguments and their names different fallacies like formal fallacies and informal fallacies but be careful because throwing out terms like circular argument circular reasoning poisoning the well don't always help you in the

conversation and it's not always clear that the person using those terms understands what they mean by those terms so studying informal fallacies can be really helpful for yourself but tossing around the terms to your interlocutors to those you're debating with is not

always that helpful if you can recognize that they're poisoning the well it'll be easier for you to explain to them why that's bad and what they're doing but if they don't know those terms then that's not going to be helpful and then tip

number four start making your own arguments write down your thoughts like we said earlier form them into arguments and then evaluate them do I have good reasons for believing what I believe and you can put all those thoughts into one journal for you to reflect on later for

you to go back and analyze for you to critique yourself and for you to learn from all right so that's it that's how you can think more logically I hope that's been helpful if you guys learned something let me know in the comments and if you made it this far leave me a

thinking emoji in the comments make sure you subscribe if you haven't so you don't miss out on any future tips and tricks on how to study and think more deeply I'll catch you guys next time

How to Think Logically

ParkNotes

Introduction and practical steps to logical thinking

Two practical steps: write down your thoughts and study logic.

Step 1: Writing down thoughts clarifies and analyzes them.

Recommendation to dedicate a notebook for deep thinking.

Step 2: Studying logic helps evaluate written thoughts.

Logic defined as the analysis and appraisal of arguments.

Foundations of logic and the laws of classical logic

Brief history of logic, tracing it back to ancient Greece.

Three laws of classical logic: non-contradiction, identity, and excluded middle.

Explanation of the law of non-contradiction (not both a and not a).

Explanation of the law of identity (a = a).

Explanation of the law of excluded middle (a or not a).

Philip Goff's logic constraint on metaphysical theorizing.

Argument for God's existence from the metaphysics of logic

Anderson and Welty's argument grounding logical laws in God's mind.

Summary of the argument: necessarily existing thoughts require a necessarily existing mind.

Mention of Malpass's atheistic perspective and a podcast debate.

Book recommendations and additional tips for studying logic

Sponsor mention: Brilliant.org for interactive logic learning.

Introductory logic book recommendations (*Being Logical*, *A Rulebook for Arguments*, *The Little Logic Book*, *The Philosopher's Toolkit*).

More advanced logic book recommendations (Gensler, Poythress, Kelley, Copi and Cohen).

Advanced books for philosophy students (Papineau, *More Precisely*).

Books on philosophical logic and metalogic (McFarland, Haack, Sider).

Get a scratchbook for practice and repetition.

Create a logic commonplace book for key terms, definitions, puzzles, and fallacies.

Start making and evaluating your own arguments.