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Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.

Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usually understood either as sentences or as propositions and are characterized by their internal structure; complex propositions are made up of simpler propositions linked to each other by propositional connectives like $\land$ (and) or $\to$ (if...then). The truth of a proposition usually depends on the denotations of its constituents. Logically true propositions constitute a special case since their truth depends only on the logical vocabulary used in them and not on the denotations of other terms.

Arguments can be either correct or incorrect. An argument is correct if its premises support its conclusion. The strongest form of support is found in deductive arguments: it is impossible for their premises to be true and their conclusion to be false. Deductive arguments contrast with ampliative arguments, which may arrive in their conclusion at new information that is not present in the premises. However, it is possible for all their premises to be true while their conclusion is still false. Many arguments found in everyday discourse and the sciences are ampliative arguments, sometimes divided into inductive and abductive arguments. Inductive arguments usually take the form of statistical generalizations while abductive arguments are ''inferences to the best explanation''. Arguments that fall short of the standards of correct reasoning are called fallacies.

Systems of logic are theoretical frameworks for assessing the correctness of reasoning and arguments. Logic has been studied since Antiquity; early approaches include Aristotelian logic, Stoic logic, Anviksiki, and the mohists. Modern formal logic has its roots in the work of late 19th-century mathematicians such as Gottlob Frege. While Aristotelian logic focuses on reasoning in the form of syllogisms, in the modern era its traditional dominance was replaced by classical logic, a set of fundamental logical intuitions shared by most logicians. It consists of propositional logic, which only considers the logical relations on the level of propositions, and first-order logic, which also articulates the internal structure of propositions using various linguistic devices, such as predicates and quantifiers. Extended logics accept the basic intuitions behind classical logic and extend it to other fields, such as metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. Deviant logics, on the other hand, reject certain classical intuitions and provide alternative accounts of the fundamental laws of logic.

Definition

The word "logic" originates from the Greek word "logos", which has a variety of translations, such as reason, discourse, or language. Logic is traditionally defined as the study of the laws of thought or correct reasoning, and is usually understood in terms of inferences or arguments. Reasoning may be seen as the activity of drawing inferences whose outward expression is given in arguments. An inference or an argument is a set of premises together with a conclusion. Logic is interested in whether arguments are good or inferences are valid, i.e. whether the premises support their conclusions. These general characterizations apply to logic in the widest sense since they are true both for formal and informal logic, but many definitions of logic focus on the more paradigmatic formal logic. In this narrower sense, logic is a formal science that studies how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. In this regard, logic is sometimes contrasted with the theory of rationality, which is wider since it covers all forms of good reasoning.

As a formal science, logic contrasts with both the natural and social sciences in that it tries to characterize the inferential relations between premises and conclusions based on their structure alone. This means that the actual content of these propositions, i.e. their specific topic, is not important for whether the inference is valid or not. Valid inferences are characterized by the fact that the truth of their premises ensures the truth of their conclusion: it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. The general logical structures characterizing valid inferences are called rules of inference. In this sense, logic is often defined as the study of valid inference. This contrasts with another prominent characterization of logic as the science of logical truths. A proposition is logically true if its truth depends only on the logical vocabulary used in it. This means that it is true in all possible worlds and under all interpretations of its non-logical terms. These two characterizations of logic are closely related to each other: an inference is valid if the material conditional from its premises to its conclusion is logically true.

The term "logic" can also be used in a slightly different sense as a countable noun. In this sense, ''a logic'' is a logical formal system. Different logics differ from each other concerning the formal languages used to express them and, most importantly, concerning the rules of inference they accept as valid. Starting in the 20th century, many new formal systems have been proposed. There are various disagreements concerning what makes a formal system a logic. For example, it has been suggested that only logically complete systems qualify as logics. For such reasons, some theorists deny that higher-order logics and fuzzy logic are logics in the strict sense.

Formal and informal logic

Logic encompasses both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the traditionally dominant field, but applying its insights to actual everyday arguments has prompted modern developments of informal logic, which considers problems that formal logic on its own is unable to address. Both provide criteria for assessing the correctness of arguments and distinguishing them from fallacies. Various suggestions have been made concerning how to draw the distinction between the two but there is no universally accepted answer.

The most literal approach sees the terms "formal" and "informal" as applying to the language used to express arguments. On this view, formal logic studies arguments expressed in formal languages while informal logic studies arguments expressed in informal or natural languages. This means that the inference from the formulas and to the conclusion is studied by formal logic. The inference from the English sentences "Al lit a cigarette" and "Bill stormed out of the room" to the sentence "Al lit a cigarette and Bill stormed out of the room", on the other hand, belongs to informal logic. Formal languages are characterized by their precision and simplicity. They normally contain a very limited vocabulary and exact rules on how their symbols can be used to construct sentences, usually referred to as well-formed formulas. This simplicity and exactness of formal logic make it capable of formulating precise rules of inference that determine whether a given argument is valid. This approach brings with it the need to translate natural language arguments into the formal language before their validity can be assessed, a procedure that comes with various problems of its own. Informal logic avoids some of these problems by analyzing natural language arguments in their original form without the need of translation. But it faces problems associated with the ambiguity, vagueness, and context-dependence of natural language expressions. A closely related approach applies the terms "formal" and "informal" not just to the language used, but more generally to the standards, criteria, and procedures of argumentation.

Another approach draws the distinction according to the different types of inferences analyzed. This perspective understands formal logic as the study of deductive inferences in contrast to informal logic as the study of non-deductive inferences, like inductive or abductive inferences. The characteristic of deductive inferences is that the truth of their premises ensures the truth of their conclusion. This means that if all the premises are true, it is impossible for the conclusion to be false. For this reason, deductive inferences are in a sense trivial or uninteresting since they do not provide the thinker with any new information not already found in the premises. Non-deductive inferences, on the other hand, are ampliative: they help the thinker learn something above and beyond what is already stated in the premises. They achieve this at the cost of certainty: even if all premises are true, the conclusion of an ampliative argument may still be false.

One more approach tries to link the difference between formal and informal logic to the distinction between formal and informal fallacies. This distinction is often drawn in relation to the ''form'', ''content'', and '' context'' of arguments. In the case of formal fallacies, the error is found on the level of the argument's form, whereas for informal fallacies, the content and context of the argument are responsible. Formal logic abstracts away from the argument's content and is only interested in its form, specifically whether it follows a valid rule of inference. In this regard, it is not important for the validity of a formal argument whether its premises are true or false. Informal logic, on the other hand, also takes the content and context of an argument into consideration. A false dilemma, for example, involves an error of content by excluding viable options, as in "you are either with us or against us; you are not with us; therefore, you are against us". For the strawman fallacy, on the other hand, the error is found on the level of context: a weak position is first described and then defeated, even though the opponent does not hold this position. But in another context, against an opponent that actually defends the strawman position, the argument is correct.

Other accounts draw the distinction based on investigating general forms of arguments in contrast to particular instances or on the study of logical constants instead of substantive concepts. A further approach focuses on the discussion of logical topics with or without formal devices or on the role of epistemology for the assessment of arguments.

Fundamental concepts

Premises, conclusions, and truth

Premises and conclusions

''Premises'' and ''conclusions'' are the basic parts of inferences or arguments and therefore play a central role in logic. In the case of a valid inference or a correct argument, the conclusion follows from the premises, or in other words, the premises support the conclusion. For instance, the premises "Mars is red" and "Mars is a planet" support the conclusion "Mars is a red planet". It is generally accepted that premises and conclusions have to be truth-bearers.Though see imperative logic, dynamic semantics, and inquisitive semantics for logical systems which narrow or generalize the notion of valid inference to other kinds of objects. This means that they have a truth value: they are either true or false. Thus contemporary philosophy generally sees them either as ''propositions'' or as '' sentences''. Propositions are the denotations of sentences and are usually understood as abstract objects.

Propositional theories of premises and conclusions are often criticized because of the difficulties involved in specifying the identity criteria of abstract objects or because of naturalist considerations. These objections are avoided by seeing premises and conclusions not as propositions but as sentences, i.e. as concrete linguistic objects like the symbols displayed on a page of a book. But this approach comes with new problems of its own: sentences are often context-dependent and ambiguous, meaning an argument's validity would not only depend on its parts but also on its context and on how it is interpreted.

In earlier work, premises and conclusions were understood in psychological terms as thoughts or judgments, in an approach known as " psychologism". This position was heavily criticized around the turn of the 20th century.

Internal structure

Premises and conclusions have internal structure. As propositions or sentences, they can be either simple or complex. A complex proposition has other propositions as its constituents, which are linked to each other through propositional connectives like "and" or "if...then". Simple propositions, on the other hand, do not have propositional parts. But they can also be conceived as having an internal structure: they are made up of subpropositional parts, like singular terms and predicates. For example, the simple proposition "Mars is red" can be formed by applying the predicate "red" to the singular term "Mars". In contrast, the complex proposition "Mars is red and Venus is white" is made up of two simple propositions connected by the propositional connective "and".

Whether a proposition is true depends, at least in part, on its constituents. For complex propositions formed using truth-functional propositional connectives, their truth only depends on the truth values of their parts. But this relation is more complicated in the case of simple propositions and their subpropositional parts. These subpropositional parts have meanings of their own, like referring to objects or classes of objects. Whether the simple proposition they form is true depends on their relation to reality, i.e. what the objects they refer to are like. This topic is studied by theories of reference.

Logical truth

In some cases, a simple or a complex proposition is true independently of the substantive meanings of its parts. For example, the complex proposition "if Mars is red, then Mars is red" is true independent of whether its parts, i.e. the simple proposition "Mars is red", are true or false. In such cases, the truth is called a logical truth: a proposition is logically true if its truth depends only on the logical vocabulary used in it. This means that it is true under all interpretations of its non-logical terms. In some modal logics, this notion can be understood equivalently as truth at all possible worlds. Logical truth plays an important role in logic and some theorists even define logic as the study of logical truths.

Truth tables

Truth tables can be used to show how logical connectives work or how the truth of complex propositions depends on their parts. They have a column for each input variable. Each row corresponds to one possible combination of the truth values these variables can take. The final columns present the truth values of the corresponding expressions as determined by the input values. For example, the expression uses the logical connective $\land$ (and). It could be used to express a sentence like "yesterday was Sunday and the weather was good". It is only true if both of its input variables, $p$ ("yesterday was Sunday") and $q$ ("the weather was good"), are true. In all other cases, the expression as a whole is false. Other important logical connectives are $\lor$ (or), $\to$ (if...then), and $\lnot$ (not). Truth tables can also be defined for more complex expressions that use several propositional connectives. For example, given the conditional proposition $p \to q$, one can form truth tables of its inverse , and its contraposition .

Arguments and inferences

Logic is commonly defined in terms of arguments or inferences as the study of their correctness. An ''argument'' is a set of premises together with a conclusion. An ''inference'' is the process of reasoning from these premises to the conclusion. But these terms are often used interchangeably in logic. Arguments are correct or incorrect depending on whether their premises support their conclusion. Premises and conclusions, on the other hand, are true or false depending on whether they are in accord with reality. In formal logic, a sound argument is an argument that is both correct and has only true premises. Sometimes a distinction is made between simple and complex arguments. A complex argument is made up of a chain of simple arguments. These simple arguments constitute a ''chain'' because the conclusions of the earlier arguments are used as premises in the later arguments. For a complex argument to be successful, each link of the chain has to be successful.

Arguments and inferences are either are correct or incorrect. If they are correct then their premises support their conclusion. In the incorrect case, this support is missing. It can take different forms corresponding to the different types of reasoning. The strongest form of support corresponds to deductive reasoning. But even arguments that are not deductively valid may still constitute good arguments because their premises offer non-deductive support to their conclusions. For such cases, the term ''ampliative'' or ''inductive reasoning'' is used. Deductive arguments are associated with formal logic in contrast to the relation between ampliative arguments and informal logic.

Deductive

A ''deductively valid argument'' is one whose premises guarantee the truth of its conclusion. For instance, the argument "Victoria is tall; Victoria has brown hair; therefore Victoria is tall and has brown hair" is deductively valid. For deductive validity, it does not matter whether the premises or the conclusion are actually true. So the argument "trees can speak the English language; therefore trees can speak a language" is valid because, if the premise were true, the conclusion would be true as well.

Alfred Tarski holds that deductive arguments have three essential features: (1) they are formal, i.e. they depend only on the form of the premises and the conclusion; (2) they are a priori, i.e. no sense experience is needed to determine whether they obtain; (3) they are modal, i.e. that they hold by logical necessity for the given propositions, independent of any other circumstances.

Because of the first feature, the focus on formality, deductive inference is usually identified with rules of inference. Rules of inference specify how the premises and the conclusion have to be structured for the inference to be valid. Arguments that do not follow any rule of inference are deductively invalid. The modus ponens is a prominent rule of inference. It has the form "''p''; if ''p'', then ''q''; therefore ''q''". Knowing that it has just rained ($p$) and that after rain the streets are wet ($p \to q$), one can use modus ponens to deduce that the streets are wet ($q$).

The third feature can be expressed by stating that deductively valid inferences are truth-preserving: it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. Because of this feature, it is often asserted that deductive inferences are uninformative since the conclusion cannot arrive at new information not already present in the premises. But this point is not always accepted since it would mean, for example, that most of mathematics is uninformative. A different characterization distinguishes between surface and depth information. On this view, deductive inferences are uninformative on the depth level but can be highly informative on the surface level, as may be the case for various mathematical proofs.

Ampliative

Ampliative inferences, on the other hand, are informative even on the depth level. They are more interesting in this sense since the thinker may acquire substantive information from them and thereby learn something genuinely new. But this feature comes with a certain cost: the premises support the conclusion in the sense that they make its truth more likely but they do not ensure its truth. This means that the conclusion of an ampliative argument may be false even though all its premises are true. This characteristic is closely related to '' non-monotonicity'' and '' defeasibility'': it may be necessary to retract an earlier conclusion upon receiving new information or in the light of new inferences drawn. Ampliative reasoning is of central importance since many arguments found in everyday discourse and the sciences are ampliative. Ampliative arguments are not automatically incorrect. Instead, they just follow different standards of correctness. An important aspect of most ampliative arguments is that the support they provide for their conclusion comes in degrees. In this sense, the line between correct and incorrect arguments is blurry in some cases, as when the premises offer weak but non-negligible support. This contrasts with deductive arguments, which are either valid or invalid with nothing in-between.

The terminology used to categorize ampliative arguments is inconsistent. Some authors use the term "induction" to cover all forms of non-deductive arguments. But in a more narrow sense, ''induction'' is only one type of ampliative argument besides ''abductive arguments''. Some authors also allow ''conductive arguments'' as one more type. In this narrow sense, induction is often defined as a form of statistical generalization. In this case, the premises of an inductive argument are many individual observations that all show a certain pattern. The conclusion then is a general law that this pattern always obtains. In this sense, one may infer that "all elephants are gray" based on one's past observations of the color of elephants. A closely related form of inductive inference has as its conclusion not a general law but one more specific instance, as when it is inferred that an elephant one has not seen yet is also gray. Some theorists stipulate that inductive inferences rest only on statistical considerations in order to distinguish them from abductive inference.

Abductive inference may or may not take statistical observations into consideration. In either case, the premises offer support for the conclusion because the conclusion is the best explanation of why the premises are true.On abductive reasoning, see:
* Magnani, L. 2001. ''Abduction, Reason, and Science: Processes of Discovery and Explanation''. New York: Kluwer Academic Plenum Publishers. xvii. .
* Josephson, John R., and Susan G. Josephson. 1994. ''Abductive Inference: Computation, Philosophy, Technology''. New York: Cambridge University Press. viii. .
* Bunt, H. and W. Black. 2000. ''Abduction, Belief and Context in Dialogue: Studies in Computational Pragmatics'', (''Natural Language Processing'' 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vi. . In this sense, abduction is also called the ''inference to the best explanation''. For example, given the premise that there is a plate with breadcrumbs in the kitchen in the early morning, one may infer the conclusion that one's house-mate had a midnight snack and was too tired to clean the table. This conclusion is justified because it is the best explanation of the current state of the kitchen. For abduction, it is not sufficient that the conclusion explains the premises. For example, the conclusion that a burglar broke into the house last night, got hungry on the job, and had a midnight snack, would also explain the state of the kitchen. But this conclusion is not justified because it is not the best or most likely explanation.

Fallacies

Not all arguments live up to the standards of correct reasoning. When they do not, they are usually referred to as fallacies. Their central aspect is not that their conclusion is false but that there is some flaw with the reasoning leading to this conclusion. So the argument "it is sunny today; therefore spiders have eight legs" is fallacious even though the conclusion is true. Some theorists give a more restrictive definition of fallacies by additionally requiring that they appear to be correct. This way, genuine fallacies can be distinguished from mere mistakes of reasoning due to carelessness. This explains why people tend to commit fallacies: because they have an alluring element that seduces people into committing and accepting them. However, this reference to appearances is controversial because it belongs to the field of psychology, not logic, and because appearances may be different for different people.

Fallacies are usually divided into formal and informal fallacies. For formal fallacies, the source of the error is found in the ''form'' of the argument. For example, denying the antecedent is one type of formal fallacy, as in "if Othello is a bachelor, then he is male; Othello is not a bachelor; therefore Othello is not male". But most fallacies fall into the category of informal fallacies, of which a great variety is discussed in the academic literature. The source of their error is usually found in the ''content'' or the ''context'' of the argument. Informal fallacies are sometimes categorized as fallacies of ambiguity, fallacies of presumption, or fallacies of relevance. For fallacies of ambiguity, the ambiguity and vagueness of natural language are responsible for their flaw, as in "feathers are light; what is light cannot be dark; therefore feathers cannot be dark". Fallacies of presumption have a wrong or unjustified premise but may be valid otherwise. In the case of fallacies of relevance, the premises do not support the conclusion because they are not relevant to it.

Definitory and strategic rules

The main focus of most logicians is to investigate the criteria according to which an argument is correct or incorrect. A fallacy is committed if these criteria are violated. In the case of formal logic, they are known as ''rules of inference''. They constitute definitory rules, which determine whether a certain inference is correct or which inferences are allowed. Definitory rules contrast with strategic rules. Strategic rules specify which inferential moves are necessary in order to reach a given conclusion based on a certain set of premises. This distinction does not just apply to logic but also to various games as well. In chess, for example, the definitory rules dictate that bishops may only move diagonally while the strategic rules describe how the allowed moves may be used to win a game, for example, by controlling the center and by defending one's king