Logical form: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:40, 28 June 2024

Revision as of 17:19, 9 July 2024

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:Therefore, Missy is not an animal.

A logical [[argument]], seen as an [[ordered set]] of sentences, has a logical form that [[compositionality|derives]] from the form of its constituent sentences; the logical form of an argument is sometimes called argument form.<ref name="BeallBeall2009">{{cite book|author=J. C. Beall|title=Logic: the Basics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FLnTavNvIqYC&pg=PA18|year=2009|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-0-415-77498-7|page=18}}</ref> Some authors only define logical form with respect to whole arguments, as the [[schema (logic)|schemata]] or inferential structure of the argument.<ref name="Tomassi1999">{{cite book|author=Paul Tomassi |title=Logic |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TUVQr6InyNYC&pg=PA386|year=1999|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-16696-6|pages=386}}</ref> In [[argumentation theory]] or [[informal logic]], an argument form is sometimes seen as a broader notion than the logical form.<ref name="Pinto2001">{{cite book|author=Robert C. Pinto|title=Argument, inference and dialectic: collected papers on informal logic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eK0a5CgyV7kC&pg=PA84|year=2001|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-0-7923-7005-5|page=84}}</ref>

It consists of stripping out all spurious grammatical features from the sentence (such as gender, and passive forms), and replacing all the expressions specific to ''the subject matter'' of the argument by [[schematic variable]]s. Thus, for example, the expression "all A's are B's" shows the logical form which is common to the sentences "all men are mortals", "all cats are carnivores", "all Greeks are philosophers", and so on.