Hello, I'm Dr. Anadale and I teach philosophy at Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmitsburg, Maryland.
In this video I will define logic and introduce the three acts of the mind, how they are related,
and their products.
There is a lot more to be said about each of these three acts so this video is only
an introduction.
Logic is based on three facts: human beings think, human thought has a structure, and
the structure of human thought is objective and knowable.
Logic is an explicit systematic reflection on the objective structures of human thought
and the rules that govern our reasoning.
The study of logic will sharpen your reasoning skills, help you to make better arguments,
and help you to avoid being tricked or deceived by bad arguments.
Now, logic divides the structure of human thought into three distinct acts: the act
of understanding, the act of judgment, and the act of reasoning.
Your mind performs the first act, understanding, when you grasp one object of thought, one
idea or concept, like book or human or elephant.
The act of judgment is more complex than the act of understanding.
Instead of just thinking one concept, judgment relates two concepts together, combining them
to make a claim about the way the world is.
For example, I understand the concept “elephant” and I also understand the concept “triangle.”
When I think, “Elephants are not triangles,” my mind is performing an act of judgment.
When I think “Man is mortal,” I am performing an act of judgment, relating the idea “man”
to the idea “mortal.”
Notice how judgment combines two acts of understanding
to create something new and more complex.
The third act of the mind, reasoning, is even more complex than judgment.
Reasoning moves from two or more judgments to another judgment, called the conclusion.
Reasoning is our mechanism for producing new knowledge from current knowledge.
So to review so far: There are three acts of the mind--understanding, judgment, and reasoning.
The second and third are more complex and combine acts from the earlier stages.
Judgment combines two acts of understanding and reasoning combines two or more acts of judgment.
Now each act of the mind produces its own distinct kind of thought in your mind, its
own product.
Understanding produces concepts or single ideas, like “elephant.”
Judgment produces propositions or claims about reality, like “Elephants are large.”
Reasoning produces arguments or structures that prove something new.
An example of an argument would be: “Copperheads are poisonous.
That snake is a copperhead. Therefore that snake is poisonous.”
Notice that what's happened here is I have reflected upon the information contained in
the first two propositions and I've been able to use logical reasoning to produce the third
proposition, which tells me something new about copperheads, about that snake.
A helpful memory tool is this: words are combined to form sentences
which are combined to form paragraphs.
In a similar way, concepts are combined to form propositions
which are combined to form arguments.
To sum up, then: Understanding, the first act of the mind, produces concepts, which
are combined by judgment, the second act of the mind, to form propositions, which are
combined by reasoning, the third act, to form arguments.
That's all for right now. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.