Sharqiyah University PHIL 101 Introduction to Logic (Philosophy) Course Material PDF

A ‘SHARQIYAH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES PHIL 101 - INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC (PHILOSOPHY) Courtesy: Dr. Faizal Muhammed Course Revised & Compiled By (2024): Dr. Godwin Chellat...

A ‘SHARQIYAH UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES DEPARTMENT OF HUMANITIES PHIL 101 - INTRODUCTION TO LOGIC (PHILOSOPHY) Courtesy: Dr. Faizal Muhammed Course Revised & Compiled By (2024): Dr. Godwin Chellathurai Page 1 of 32  Contents Chapter 1 Introduction to Philosophy 1.1. Philosophy 1.2. Scope of Philosophy 1.3. Relevance of Philosophy 1.4. Cultural Significance of Philosophy 1.5. Major Themes of Philosophy 1.6. Western Classification of Philosophy Chapter 2 Logic 1.1. Logic 1.2. Its Nature & Importance 1.3. Types of logic: Formal & Informal logic 1.4. Methods of logic: Deduction & Induction 1.5. Principles of Logic 1.6. Truth and Validity 1.7. Soundness 1.8. Consistency Chapter 3 Love and Happiness 1.1. Love 1.2. Loving Things 1.3. Self-Esteem 1.4. Erotic Love 1.5. The Ideal Union 1.6. Bestowal 1.7. Happiness 1.8. The Nichomacean Ethics Chapter 4 Logical Reasoning – Writing to Convince Others 1.1. Writing with Precision and to Your Audience 1.2. The Introduction 1.3. The Middle 1.4. The Ending 1.5. Degressions Chapter 5 Philosophy of Education in the Sultanate of Oman 1.1. Educational Structure in Oman 1.2. Philosophy of Education in the Sultanate of Oman 1.3. Philosophy of Oman – Research Paper 1.4. What Japan can learn from the Oman Education System – Research Paper Page 2 of 32  Chapter 1 Introduction to Philosophy 1.1. Philosophy Philosophy may be defined as an attempt to explain and appreciate life and the universe as a whole. The word philosophy has been taken from two Greek words, ‘Philos’ and ‘Sophia’, which means “love of wisdom”. We sometimes use the term “philosophy” to refer to a person’s code of values or the beliefs by which they live. It is an academic discipline. It is a methodology which lies at the root of all subjects Philosophy is the most comprehensive of all enquiries which includes every branch of human enquiry. The practical activity of raising fundamental questions and attempting to answer them in thinking and writing Philosophy does not take facts on their face-value but discovers their meaning and significance in the larger whole of experience, in the scheme of life and reality. 1.2. Scope of Philosophy Philosophy deals with conceptual enquiry of the fundamental issues related to life, knowledge, and values. It analyses the meaning of concepts identifies the logical connections evaluates arguments and exposes their fallacies 1.3. Relevance of Philosophy The study of philosophy improves your skills like  critical thinking,  argumentation,  communication, Page 3 of 32   reasoning,  analysis and  problem solving. Philosophy allows you to justify your opinions, spot bad arguments and to explain to people why they are wrong, and you are right. Philosophy basically teaches you to think! 1.4. Cultural Significance of Philosophy Philosophy gives the ability to organize ideas systematically and see things from different perspectives. It helps to acquire a deeper understanding of our culture and ourselves. It plays a transformative role in our lives and social institutions Philosophy shows us the way to improve ourselves and the world around us. 1.5. Major Themes of Philosophy Epistemology: It has been taken from Greek word “episteme” which means “to know”. It is the study of knowledge or how to tell when we really know something. It deals with the ways in which we can acquire knowledge. Metaphysics: literally, “Meta” means “after or beyond the physical”. It is the study of “ultimate reality” or how things really are. It discusses the questions regarding ultimate reality or how things really are. Ethics/ Moral philosophy: The word ‘ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” which means human conduct or behavior and the word “moral” comes from another Greek word “mores’ which also means human conduct or behavior. So, it is the study or science of human conduct or behavior. It describes the moral problems, the norms of right/wrong, good/bad, etc. Philosophy of Religion discusses the concept of God, nature of religious faith and belief, etc. Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature and origin of mind. Page 4 of 32  Aesthetics: consists of problems regarding beauty and sublimity. It is the study of feelings and judgments related to beauty and art. Logic: deals with principles of valid reasoning or the study of the rules of correct reasoning. 1.6. Western Classification of Philosophy Ancient Philosophy (7th B.C. to 5th A.D.)  Pre-Socratic period  Socratic period - Socrates  Post-Socratic Period - Plato & Aristotle Medieval Philosophy (5th to 15th centuries) Modern Philosophy (16th to 19th centuries)  Rationalism: source of knowledge is reason (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza)  Empiricism: source of knowledge is experience (Locke, Berkeley, Hume)  Idealism: source of knowledge is ideas (Kant, Hegel) Postmodern or Contemporary Philosophy (20th century to present)  Logical positivism, Existentialism, Analytic & Linguistic Philosophy, Post- modernism Page 5 of 32 Glossary/Terminology Philosophy: an attempt to explain and appreciate life and the universe as a whole. Major Themes Epistemology: deals with the ways in which we can acquire knowledge. Metaphysics: discusses the questions regarding ultimate reality or how things really are. Ethics/ Moral philosophy: describes the moral problems, the norms of right/wrong, good/bad, etc. Philosophy of Religion discusses the concept of God, nature of religious faith and belief, etc. Philosophy of Mind deals with the nature and origin of mind. Aesthetics: consists of problems regarding beauty and sublimity. Logic: deals with principles of valid reasoning. Rationalism: source of knowledge is reason. Empiricism: source of knowledge is experience. Idealism: source of knowledge is ideas. Page 6 of 32  Chapter 2 LOGIC 1.1. Logic The term "logic" came from the Greek word logos, which is sometimes translated as "sentence", "discourse", "reason", "rule", and "ratio". Logic may be defined as the study of the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning. 1.2. Importance of Logic: 1. It helps us to distinguish good arguments from bad ones. 2. It makes our thinking clear and accurate. 3. The study of logic will give students the techniques and methods for testing the correctness of many kinds of reasoning, including their own. 4. And when errors are detected, they can easily solve it. 5. It strengthens our intellectual skills. 6. It advances our quest for knowledge and understanding, whatever is our field of interest. 7. It enlarges our capacity to formulates arguments and analyze them critically. 1.3. Types of logic There are two types of logic 1) Formal and 2) informal logic 1) Formal Logic "Formal logic" is mainly concerned with formal systems of logic. These are specially constructed systems for carrying out proofs, where the languages and rules of reasoning are precisely and carefully defined. Sentential logic and Predicate Logic are examples of formal systems of logic. Page 7 of 32 Formal Logic is a set of rules for making deductions. It gives us some principles and methods of reasoning. Formal logic, as opposed to other sciences, studies not an infinite number of phenomena in nature, but only one how a man thinks, how he learns the world surrounding us, and how people understand each other. In other words, what laws govern the logic of our thinking, i.e., our reasoning and judgments in any science or in everyday life. Characteristics of formal logic Formal logic does not deal with the content of thinking, but only with the law and form of thinking. Form is inference form, which refers to direct inference and indirect inference. Direct inference is an inference in which we draw a conclusion directly from one premise. Indirect inference is an inference in which we draw a conclusion from two or more than two premises. 2) Informal Logic The term "informal logic" is often used to mean the same thing as critical thinking. Sometimes it is used to refer to the study of reasoning and fallacies in the context of everyday life. Informal Logic is a broad term. It uses the various methods of analyzing and evaluating arguments used in everyday life. Informal logic as may be defined as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation. Characteristics of Informal Logic 1. Language – plays a fundamental role in reasoning. Understanding how language influences our reasoning is foundational to understanding reasoning itself. 2. Classification – is the organizing of different things into separate classes according to similarities and differences. This helps us understand the relationship between things. 3. Definition – describes what a word means based on its origin. Page 8 of 32 4. Argumentation –includes methods for creating your own logical reasons. This is considered to the art of conversation. 1.4. Methods of logic: Deduction & Induction Deduction and are two methods of logic used to arrive at a conclusion based on information assumed to be true. Both are used in research to establish hypotheses. Deduction Deduction arrives at a specific conclusion based on generalizations. Deduction begins with the general and ends with the specific Arguments based on laws, rules, or other widely accepted principles are best expressed deductively. Induction Induction takes events and makes generalizations. Induction is usually described as moving from the specific to the general Arguments based on experience or observation are best expressed inductively, 1.5. The principles of logic There are many principles of reasoning that are part of logic, but the main (not the only) thing that we study in logic are principles governing the validity of arguments whether certain conclusions follow from some given assumptions. Logic, other than the validity of arguments, also studies consistency, logical truths, and properties of logical systems such as soundness. Consider the following two arguments: Argument #1: Ali is over 90 years old. So, Ali is over 20 years old. Argument #2: Ali is over 20 years old. So, Ali is over 90 years old. Here, the conclusion of the first argument follows from the premise, whereas the conclusion of the second argument does not follow from its premise. Page 9 of 32 1.6. Validity and Truth Validity is about the logical connection between the premises and the conclusion. A valid argument is one where the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion, that is, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. In logic, validity is restricted to only arguments and not statements, and truth is a property of statements but not arguments 1.7. Soundness If an argument is valid, and all the premises are true, then it is called a sound argument. So given that a sound argument is valid and has true premises, its conclusion must also be true. An argument that is not sound is an unsound argument. 1.8. Consistency Consistency means that no part of the argument contradicts another. A set of statements is inconsistent if not every member of it can possibly be true. For example, some set of statements contains, “Lincoln was assassinated” and “Lincoln was not assassinated,” it cannot be a consistent set because one of those two statements about Lincoln must be false. Page 10 of 32 Glossary/Terminology Logic: study of the methods and principles used to distinguish good (correct) from bad (incorrect) reasoning. Formal logic: specially constructed systems for carrying out proofs, where the languages and rules of reasoning are precisely and carefully defined. Informal logic: study of reasoning and fallacies in the context of everyday life. Language: foundational to understand reasoning. Classification: organizing of different things into separate classes according to similarities and differences. Definition: describes what a word means based on its origin. Argumentation: methods for creating logical reasons. Deduction: specific conclusion based on generalizations. Induction: takes events and makes generalizations. Validity: if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. Sound argument: all the premises are true, conclusion true and argument valid. Consistency: no part of the argument contradicts another. Page 11 of 32  Chapter 3 LOVE AND HAPPINESS In this chapter we will begin to study things that matter, things that are important. We have had brief passing encounters with ethical issues in prior chapters but beginning with this chapter and for the remainder of this text we will be concerned with issues that are, at least broadly speaking, ethical. We will begin with the things that matter to us individually, the things we love. Of course, different people love different things, people, and activities, so our starting point has to do with things that are good in a highly subjective way. But after thinking some about the nature of love, we will turn our attention to the good life later in this chapter. It’s tempting to think that happiness and the good life are, like love, highly subjective. But notice that we can love, prefer, and pursue things that are also quite self-destructive. Between love and happiness, it is quite possible for us to be at odds with ourselves. Indeed, this is the stuff of tragedy. So perhaps what will make us happy and lead to a flourishing life isn’t so subjective after all. 1.1. Love Love comes in many varieties. A few varieties of love identified in ancient Greece continue to provide useful points of orientation. The Greek terms for these are Philia, eros and agape. Philia is friendship (this word is also the root of “philosophy” literally translated as the love of wisdom). Eros refers to erotic love, and agape we are most familiar with through the Christian tradition as something like universal love for all people. Agape is the sort of love that God has for all people, and it also provides the foundation for Christian ethical precepts. The classic account of Philia comes from Aristotle who takes friendship to be a concern for the good of another for her sake. In friendship we adopt the good of another as a good of our own. It’s important that we understand this as expanding our sphere of concern Page 12 of 32 beyond ourselves. Concern for another just because of some benefit she will bring to us is not genuine friendship. Cultivating a relationship with someone because you think it will improve your social standing or help you land a job is not really love in the sense of friendship. This is the significance of having concern for another for his or her own sake. Given this view, we can see the cynical view that everyone is ultimately motivated only by narrow self-centered self-interest as entailing the non-existence of Philia or friendship. For this reason, cynicism seems a rather sad and lonely view. Friendship is not, on Aristotle’s view, opposed to self-interest. It is common to think that when we come to genuinely care for another we do so at the expense of self-interest. Love, on this popular view often involves a measure of self-sacrifice for the sake of another. But this popular view is at best a bad distortion of Aristotle’s view of friendship. This is because Aristotle takes love in the sense of friendship to involve an expansion of our own sphere of concern to include the good of another, not the refocusing of it away from ourselves. Of course, there will be conflicting desires among friends. But among friends these aren’t mere conflicts between their individual wills. Rather, when I love my friend in the sense of Philia and I want one thing while my friend has a competing desire, I experience this as an internal conflict of my own will, and perhaps my friend does, too. It might not be obvious to either of us which movie we should see on our night out together. But the question of my self-interest versus my friend’s dissolves in our mutual concern for each other for his or her own sake. The salient issue becomes what movie we should see together. We often suppose that loving another means feeling good about that person. But love is emotionally more complicated than that, and Aristotle’s account of Philia sheds some light on this. A parent who loves his child will generally feel good about that child when things are going well. But another emotional manifestation of wholehearted love for the child might include disappointment when the child makes an irresponsible choice. This makes perfect sense on Aristotle’s account since to love the child is to adopt the good for the child as the good for the parent. When the child’s bad choice threatens what’s good for the child, being disappointed can be seen as part of caring about what is best for the child. A corollary of Page 13 of 32 this insight is that coddling or spoiling a child is not the loving thing for a parent to do when this is liable to undermine what is good for the child in the long run. 1.2 Loving things If philosophy is genuinely a case of Philia, then we should be able to make sense out of talk of loving things other than persons. We do commonly talk of loving chocolate, loving this or that band, or loving our house. In most cases this probably shouldn’t be taken literally. Love is not mere appreciation, preferring, or desiring. So, saying I love the new Spoon album isn’t saying that I care for it for its own sake or that I have adopted its interests as my own. It doesn’t have interests that I’m in any position to adopt as my own. So, talk of loving things other than persons is often merely metaphorical. But is it always metaphorical? 1.3 Self-Esteem What if we apply Aristotle’s classic treatment of Philia to ourselves? The result is just that to love ourselves is to adopt the good for ourselves as a good of our own. Broadly speaking, to love yourself is just to care about what is best for you. We haven’t yet said much about what is best for you. But let’s suppose for now that what is best for you is in some ways subjective and to be understood in terms of what I love. If what’s best for me is just what’s good for the things I love, then to love myself is just to love what I love. So, we might love our bodies, but not whole-heartedly when we hold ourselves to unrealistic standards of physical beauty. Too many of us love our lovers, but not whole- heartedly because we still wish they were somehow more ideal. Or we might love our work, but not whole-heartedly if we feel it is under-appreciated or if it has too much drudgery attached to it. On Frankfurt’s account, these are all examples of ways in which we might suffer from low self-esteem. To love yourself is nothing more than to love your friends and family, your community, your activities, and projects whole-heartedly. To love yourself is to wholeheartedly love what you love. We are frequently told that we must love ourselves before we can love others. And in this conventional wisdom, loving ourselves just means feeling good about ourselves or thinking we are perfectly fine the way we are. But this is the narcissistic approach to self- Page 14 of 32 esteem, a self-referential approach that is continually and simultaneously perpetuated and exploited in our consumer culture. Pop psychology tells us that we can’t care for others until we care for ourselves, and consumerism makes sure that we are never quite done taking care of ourselves. This view is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it can be hard to penetrate even with clear and compelling argument. What Frankfurt is recommending, perhaps without enough fanfare, is that this popular cult of self-esteem gets things backwards. Leading a meaningful life and loving yourself is a matter of whole-heartedly caring about other things. There is no reference to feeling good about yourself in Frankfurt’s account of self-love. If things go well, feeling good about yourself might be the result of whole-heartedly loving what you love. But trying to feel good about yourself is exactly the wrong starting place. 1.4 Erotic Love Even the most subtle minds are often overly tempted by the lure of simplification. So, it is not too surprising to hear smart people speaking of erotic love as nothing more than friendship plus sex. This view has the attraction of reducing erotic love to just a special variety of Philia. But the world has seen plenty of serious lovers that for one reason or another can’t or don’t have sex. And we are familiar enough with the notion of “friends with benefits” that aren’t cases of erotic love. We also struggle here with the unfortunate fact that the word “erotic” has acquired a seedy connotation over the past century or two and now often serves as a code word for “X Rated.” This is somewhat worse than a distortion of the word’s traditional meaning. Erotic love does involve desire, attachment, and passion that is focused on a person, but this is not exhausted by the desire for sex. It’s not even clear that this kind of love entails desire for sex. So, it’s probably best to try to examine erotic love on its own terms, first and then maybe somewhere down the line thinks about how it relates to Philia or friendship. The classic work on erotic love is Plato’s Symposium. This dialogue is a literary masterpiece as well as an interesting philosophical discussion of enduring themes on love. Do we search for our ideal other half in love? Do we love for reasons? And if so, what of Page 15 of 32 the individuals we love? Do they matter except for the qualities we find loveable in them? These issues remain relevant in the very active contemporary literature on erotic love. Erotic love is traditionally thought of as the kind of love that involves passionate longing or desire. This would appear to make erotic love self-centered, and this seems to be at odds with the idea of Philia where another is valued for his or her own sake. A developed account of eros might resolve this apparent tension. And some further reflection on passionate longing might motivate this. If erotic love is hopelessly mired in selfish desire, then we might deem it a bad thing, nothing more than a euphemism for lust. But this would entirely miss what many people seek and sometimes find in erotic loving relationships. 1.5 The Ideal Union Nozick proposes a model of love as a kind of union. In Nozick’s version of the union model lovers form a “we” which is a new and different kind of entity, something more than just the sum of two individuals. We might be on to Nozick’s idea of a “we” when we think of lovers as couples. Being part of a couple changes how we relate to the rest of the world. The IRS now wants to hear from “us” every year. We now socialize with other couples as a couple. I might be known as her husband to some, and she will be known as my wife to others. However philosophical theories of love as a union work out, many of us seek partners we think will be ideal complements to ourselves. The dream of a “soul mate” has powerful appeal. In the grip of this vision, we often find ourselves projecting what we want to see on to others who probably don’t live up to our desires. This may be a pretty good description of infatuation. A classic literary expression of “the birth of love” is given by the French writer Stendhal (1822 On Love). Stendhal describes falling in love as a process of crystallization, referring to how a twig left in a salt mine for a period will be retrieved covered in salt crystals. Similarly, our perception of our beloved is laced with projections of our own imaginative desire. In infatuation, our imagination gets the best of us and presents a distorted picture of another. The prospects for disappointment are built into such high expectations. If you Page 16 of 32 haven’t personally fallen victim to the cycle of infatuation, disillusionment, and heartbreak yourself, I’m sure you know others who have. Our challenge at this point is to find a way of understanding erotic love that is not both selfish and self-defeating. As easy as it might be to fall victim to cynicism, we should find hope in the many cases of people who do find mutually enriching loving relationships. It might help to turn our attention away from what we want and towards trying to understand how erotic love enriches the lives of lovers when it does. 1.6 Bestowal Notice how lovers affect each other. A kindness from a lover isn’t just pleasant, it can also improve the beloved. A sincere complement isn’t just acknowledgement of something attractive or admirable in us, it amplifies that attractive or admirable quality. When we value something or someone, we generally appraise that thing or person positively. Further, doing so can make that thing or person more praiseworthy. Through valuing something we bestow value on it. The marketplace provides a simple illustration of this in a very straightforward sense. If lots of people value a house when it goes on the market, its value in a very objective sense increase. It will fetch a higher price as a result. We bestow objective market value through subjectively appraising things highly. Popularity and attraction work something like this in a superficial way. A person’s popularity can be substantially boosted by a few people deeming him or her to be likable. But this is not the kind of bestowal of value that makes loving relationships so enriching to the lives of lovers. 1.7 Happiness Let’s start with the idea of something mattering or being important. First notice the difference between something mattering to us and something mattering for us. Almost anything could matter to someone. All it takes for something to matter to someone is for that person to be concerned with it. Mattering to or being important to someone is subjective. Stamp collecting might matter to one person but not another. Football matters to some people but not others. The difference lies entirely in what the various parties are concerned with, prefer, or value. Page 17 of 32 Mattering for is another matter. Eating well and getting exercise matter for your health whether you prefer to do these things or not. Participating in caring relationships matters for your psychological wellbeing and this is arguably so even for relatively introverted people who enjoy their solitude. The notion of mattering for is not entirely subjective. And what matters for you is not relative to you in the way that what matters to you is. But mattering for is relational in a different way. There is a sense in which the idea of something mattering for you is incomplete. Things matter for your health, for your psychological wellbeing, your happiness, your marriage, your career, your projects, or for the quality of your life. You don’t get to just pick and choose which things matter for your health or for your psychological wellbeing. For these things at least, what matters for you is largely settled by what and who you are. It remains an open question whether what matters for our happiness is up to us or subjective in the way that what matters to us is subjective. Do I get to pick and choose what matters for my happiness? Are what matters for my happiness a question of what matters to me? Assuming the good life is the happy life, the question we have before us now is whether happiness and the good life are subjective and relative to our values and preferences the way that what matters to us is. Popular opinion would seem to make short work of these questions and straightaway affirm the subjectivity of happiness and the good life. Surely different people enjoy different things depending on their preferences and values. And nobody gets to decide what I enjoy or prefer but me. So, concludes this line of argument, happiness for me and the good life for me are up to me. 1.8 The Nichomacean Ethics When we considered the consumerist conception of happiness and the good life, we spoke of identifying what would make us happy. Notice that this way of thinking about happiness puts us in a passive position. Something outside of us does something to us, and it makes us happy. All that is required of us is to be fortunate enough to be able to receive this wonderful benefit. By contrast, for Aristotle, happiness is active. Things external to us might help or hinder, but ultimately, for us to be happy just is for us to be active in the right sorts of ways. Page 18 of 32 Aristotle identifies leading the good life with being happy. But happiness in the sense he has in mind is not just feeling happy or being in a happy mood. Moods and feelings are things that come and go in our lives. They are temporary states of mind. Aristotle is not interested in moods so much as what it means to live well. So, we are after the idea of an excellent life. The Greek term Aristotle uses is eudaimonia and this might be best translated as living well and doing well. So, when Aristotle identifies the good life with happiness, he has something more enduring and emblematic of a life in mind than just feeling good. You might recall that Aristotle has a teleological view of the world. That is, everything has an end or a goal towards which it strives. He is inclined to understand the nature of things in terms of how they function in pursuing the ends towards which they are oriented. In this spirit, Aristotle would take goodness to be something we naturally aim at, something we are oriented towards by nature. So, for Aristotle, the idea of the good life is understood in a naturalistic way. Aristotle conceives of ethics in a way that blends seamlessly into his broader paradigm for understanding the natural world. Goodness is an integral aspect of the natural world. What is good for a thing can be understood in terms of that thing realizing its telos. We are creatures of habit. While this often presents an obstacle to acting on our considered interests, habit is also the means available to us for shaping our lives for the better. Recognizing that making some a change would be good for us typically doesn’t result in our immediately preferring it. Many of us, for instance, recognize that getting more exercise and eating better would be good for us. But thinking that more exercise would improve our lives doesn’t automatically result in feeling the urge to go for a run. Habituation, however, can bring our preferences and urges into line. People that regularly go for runs do often have the otherwise unusual urge to go for a run. Good habits are potentially as addictive as bad ones. And once we establish a good habit, that becomes what we prefer and what we enjoy the most. For Aristotle, the power you must shape your life for the better lies in your ability to intentionally shape your habits. Once we have figured out what really is in our best interest by examining who we are and how we function, the key to being happy and living well is to mold our inclinations, preferences, and pleasures through habituation. Page 19 of 32 For Aristotle, to be virtuous is to have habitually established inclinations and preferences for actively exercising our human rational capacities. Virtue aims at flourishing. Habit, on this view, is quite literally character building. This way of thinking about virtue stands in sharp contrast to more popular conceptions where to be virtuous involves lots of self- sacrifice. We suffer from a Christianized notion of virtue that is often associated with self- denial. To be virtuous in the popular sense means something like not overindulging in cheesecake or sex. But we are concerned with the idea of virtue as a kind of excellence. When Aristotle talks about virtue, he is just talking about the excellent character traits a person might have. What makes a character trait a good one is that overall, it contributes better to a flourishing life than contrasting traits. So, life in accordance with virtue promotes human flourishing, and for this reason it is also likely to be the most pleasant. Happiness, however, requires more than just virtue. It also requires some degree of good fortune. A person with a virtuous character who is also in a coma is not really flourishing. Likewise, a virtuous person who lives in a community of not so virtuous people faces a significant obstacle to flourishing. Living in community of fools might provide very limited opportunities for exercising one’s rational capacities. There would be no one to talk philosophy with for starters. More seriously, disputes could not be settled reasonably, but only through vicious maneuvering for dominance. Extreme poverty can be an obstacle to flourishing. Being always anxious about where your next meal is coming from could make leading the active life of the rational element a difficult proposition. But extreme affluence and luxury could present its own obstacles since they offer endless distractions, draw your attention to trifles, and ultimately render you passive and weak. How much and what kind of good fortune does leading the good life require? Perhaps we can’t give a very precise answer, but it might do to say that we require enough good fortune to give us ample opportunity to exercise our rational faculties. Here is an excellent translation of Book 1 of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a PDF: http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99036947.pdf Here is the complete Nicomachean Ethics in a good, but older translation: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8438 Page 20 of 32  Chapter 4 LOGICAL REASONING – Writing to Convince Others Writing clearly in a straightforward style is the usual goal when composing a written product, but not always. Sometimes you may want to stand your language on its head to shock or amuse your readers. Or you may want to tell an interesting story; and then you’ll need effective narrative devices such as plot, character development, and setting. However, you will have a different focus when you write a business report, a newspaper editorial, or a position paper. Let's focus upon that kind of writing. It is especially important that your writing be clear and well-structured. It doesn’t mean that it should be boring. Writing logically does require paying attention to the style as well as to the structure of the written piece. This chapter offers suggestions about how to improve this kind of writing, but these suggestions are rules of thumb, not rules to be obeyed to the letter. OK, first things first, but not necessarily in that order. Here is the list of rules that all good writers invariably follow: 1. Be more or less specific. 2. Use not bad grammars. 3. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out. 4. Don't use no double negatives. 5. Avoid tumbling off the cliff of triteness into the dark abyss of overused metaphors. 6. Take care that your verb and your subject is in agreement. 7. No sentence fragments. 8. Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct. 9. Who needs rhetorical questions? Page 21 of 32  10. Use the apostrophe in its proper place. 11. Avoid colloquial stuff, like totally. 12. Avoid those run-on sentences you know the ones they stop and then start again they should be separated with semicolons. 13. The passive voice should be used infrequently. 14. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. 15. Excessive use of exclamation points can be disastrous!!!! 16. Exaggeration is a million times worse than understatement. 17. Stamp out and eliminate redundancy because, if you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing, so reread your work and improve it by editing out the repetition you noticed during the rereading. 18. Tis incumbent upon one to employ the vernacular and eschew archaisms. 19. It's not O.K. to use ampersands & abbreviations. 20. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are usually (but not always) an obstacle for readers (and make it harder on readers even if you're being careful) who have the task of understanding your work (article, passage, document, and so forth). This chapter emphasizes how to create a successful argumentative essay. An argumentative essay is a work of nonfiction prose stating and defending a position on some issue. It is a certain kind of persuasive writing. But persuasive writing is, well, not always persuasive to a critical thinker. As writers and as critical readers, we need to remind ourselves that it is unnatural for people to reach the truth by finding good reasons. What is natural is making up our mind using our gut instincts, then going out to find reasons with which we can bombard our opponents while covering up any reasons that appear to threaten our own beliefs. Page 22 of 32 1.1 Writing with Precision and to Your Audience One suggestion for promoting effective writing is to be precise. But how do you follow a suggestion like that? When should you be precise? Where? How? Unfortunately, there is no recipe to follow. About all that can be said is that you should be precise "where appropriate," but you should not be pseudo precise. Nevertheless, after seeing an example or two below of how to be precise and comparing it with examples of failing to be precise, you will get the point. Here is a question that is answered precisely and then imprecisely: "How do you get to Bill's house from here?" RELATIVELY PRECISE ANSWER: Go six blocks up this street to the first traffic light. Turn right, and it will be the red house with white trim about in the middle of the next block. It's on your left. Or maybe it's on your right; I can't remember. RELATIVELY IMPRECISE ANSWER: You can't miss it. He lives in the house next to my friend Ted. Ted lives on Braithwaite Street. Ted's is the most beautiful house on the block; Bill and Ted practice their electric guitars there in the garage every night. Keep an eye on their phone booth when you're there. Even though it contains the imprecise terms about and maybe, the first answer is more precise. Another suggestion is to write to your audience. How do you do so? Well, first you must decide who your audience is. Don't write as if you might be read by any human being either now or in the future. That's too big an audience. For example, if you are writing a Page 23 of 32 description of Theodore Roosevelt and your audience is all professional historians, you wouldn't bother to mention that he was president before that other Roosevelt, Franklin. However, if your audience is junior high school students, you would make a mistake if you failed to mention this fact about Franklin Roosevelt. When you write a college term paper, assume that your audience is your instructor. With that in mind, you do not need to make elementary points that you might need to make if your audience were your fellow students. You can assume that the instructor is aware of the topic you are writing about but may not have had the specific new ideas you have had. Only by writing for a specific audience can you answer the question "Should I argue [explain, describe] this point, or can I presume it and leave it unsaid?" In answering that question, ask yourself this: "If my audience were right here in front of me and I were talking to them, should I say this now in order to get my idea across?" There is no formula for tailoring your writing product to your audience. Good tailoring is affected by the subject matter, by the characteristics of the audience, and by the purpose of the writing. It's hard to be more precise than this. Part of what makes writing precise is helpful structure. The structure provides a framework. In the example of directions to Bill's house, the structure in the precise answer is a sequence of steps the reader can follow to get there. The only helpful direction offered in the imprecise answer is to go to somewhere on Braithwaite Street. Writing should have a specific structure, an overall plan of development, a method of organization. Although there are many acceptable structures, not everything is acceptable. Good readers can readily distinguish an ice sculpture from a puddle. Bad writing leaves these readers with a sense that the writing is all wet and messy. One usually effective rule of thumb is to mentally divide your own piece of writing into three parts—an introduction, a middle, and an ending. In the introduction you announce Page 24 of 32 your intentions or briefly describe what you are going to say and maybe the motivation for saying it. There you usually present a sketch of your main argument to help guide the reader in what follows. In the middle you provide the details; and in the ending you summarize what you’ve said and perhaps speculate about its implications or what might follow next. This common structure can be thought of this way: you tell them what you're going to say; then you say it; then you tell them what you’ve said. This rule gets to be more important the longer the document. 1.2 The Introduction The title or headline is often the first element of an introduction. It gives the audience some idea of what the writing is about and perhaps suggests the main point. The book title The Chocolate Bible immediately tells the reader that what is inside will probably have nothing to do with religion but a lot to do with eating and preparing chocolate. If the same book had been given an overly cute but less precise title such as Your Face or Mine? the reader wouldn't have gotten as much information. That information would have to come later, such as in this first sentence of the book: Almost all of us love chocolate, but how much do you really know about this elixir of the gods? Such a simple introductory sentence sets the stage by outlining the rough boundaries of the discussion to follow. Usually, a title alone or a single introductory sentence is not sufficient to introduce the reader to the material that will follow. For example, if we want to make clear that The Page 25 of 32 Chocolate Bible is a book for manufacturers and marketers of chocolate, not consumers, then the following additional sentences can go a long way toward introducing the book: You know the subtleties of its taste, and how to manufacture and market it in your area, but what about southern Japan? Northern Japan? What manufacturing techniques and marketing strategies would you change if you wanted to reach the Egyptian market with a similar chocolate product? There is considerable room around the world to create or expand the chocolate market. Will you profit in these new markets, or will your competitor? This book will show you how to successfully produce medium-quality and high-quality cost-effective chocolate for the mass market in a variety of countries on several continents. Thanks to this introduction we readers now know this is a book about the chocolate business, with emphasis on international marketing and manufacturing. It is not a book intended for consumers. The introduction limits the scope of the discussion to follow. That is, it provides a context for the writing. It should also give some hint of why it's worth reading. Unless the writer has a captive audience, it is the writer’s duty to capture the reader's interest and indicate why the writing should not be ignored. The chocolate book's introduction captures the reader's attention by suggesting that there is money to be made by reading on. The type of introduction appropriate for one kind of writing might not be appropriate for another. If you are writing a newspaper article, you need to provide a summary of the whole article at the beginning so that editors can cut from the end and not have to cut out material in the middle or beginning. So, your intro should contain the who, what, where, when, and how. That way, if the ending of the piece is snipped off, the article Page 26 of 32 won't be hurt substantially; it will still make sense and communicate a lot of information. This same structure is appropriate for many business reports, in which the summary of the costs and the recommendations for changes in the business are made up front for the busy manager who wants to know the bottom line first and the details later. So, one helpful rule in informative writing is to give the reader the overall picture of the article by clearly announcing your intentions. But don’t write this way if you are creating a novel. Here is an introduction to informative writing in the computer business: This report argues that it is time to divest our interests in peripherals for large computers and concentrate instead on developing peripherals for desktop, laptop, and tablet computers. This sentence sets up the reader's expectations for what is to follow. When facts and figures are presented later, the reader will have a context to fit them into. Imagine yourself as the reader of a similar report with the same content but without this introduction; the facts and figures are just thrown at you without any explanation of why you should know them. Such an illogical structure would destroy the effectiveness of the report. In scholarly writing, the introduction also should mention what other scholars have said on the issue you are writing about. Give credit where credit is due, so that the reader can more readily evaluate how your own work fits in or how it challenges other work in the field. Page 27 of 32 1.3 The Middle The body of the text is where you provide the details and do what you said you would be doing. If you were planning to describe, this is where you place the details of the description. If you were planning to argue, this is where you provide convincing reasons for your claim and perhaps clarify just what the claim is that you are trying to establish. However, when arguing logically, you should concentrate on what ought to convince, not what will convince. Even if you know your audience's prejudices and how to exploit them to get them to do what you want, don't follow this path if you want to be a logical reasoner rather than a propagandist or con artist. The most common error in creating an argumentative essay is to leave out, or not to adequately develop, the assessment of objections. You’ll look narrow-minded to the knowledgeable reader if you plunge ahead with your reasons and show no appreciation for what reasons your opponent might offer. When you write your essay and argue for some conclusion, be sure you use assumptions that your audience will agree with, or else you ought to do one of two things: (1) defend those assumptions, or (2) mention that they won’t be defended even though you realize that in a fuller work they should be. Suppose your goal is to create an essay that establishes a specific point. How should you structure the essay? The first thing to keep in mind is that you need a clear idea of the content before you can bother with the structure. Once you have that clear idea, then focus on structure. One helpful rule of thumb is that the middle can be structured so the reader is moved by understandable steps from the more obvious to the less obvious. You Page 28 of 32 can establish your essay's important reasons by carefully taking the reader from points of ready agreement to points that are more controversial. At the same time, the flow of argument should usually be from the simple points to the complex points. Without this structure, many of your readers will fall by the side of your road. Your structure is your road, and if readers cannot see where they are going, they will become confused and lose interest in what you have to say. In long or complex pieces, it doesn't hurt to occasionally remind readers of what the road is, how far you’ve gone, and what lies ahead. Although it is important for your writing to have a clear structure, remember to do first things first: Write first, organize later. Brainstorm first; get your ideas onto paper or into your computer. Later you can go back and tie them together effectively by adding the proper organization. 1.4 The Ending By beginning a paragraph with a phrase such as "To summarize,” you signal that all the main points you intended to make have now been made. At this point in your writing, you should review and summarize those main ideas, especially if the piece is longer than two pages. Now the reader is ready to stop looking at the trees and refocus on the forest— that is, on whether you’ve succeeded with the grand program you promised in your introduction. But there is no formula for good writing. An argumentative essay isn't always imperfect if it lacks a summary. The phrase “to summarize” is trite; so, you might try to think of an alternative phrase for the transition to the ending. Page 29 of 32 1.5 Digressions Regarding digression, suppose you are writing a business letter to a supplier explaining how the five generators their company sent you were not the quality you had agreed to purchase. In the middle of this letter, you shouldn't take a weird turn to tell a story about how you were fascinated with generators when you were fourteen years old and how you took one apart and got your first electrical shock. That would be an unreasonable digression because it would be irrelevant. It doesn't speak to the issue even if your digression is interesting. Digressions take you down some side road and away from the main road. Normally, a digression is a fault in any writing. The reader's mental response to a digression that doesn't give strong hints of its relevance is usually something like "Enough already; now let's get back on track and make some progress." Page 30 of 32  Chapter 5 Philosophy of Education in the Sultanate of Oman Philosophy of Education in the Sultanate of Oman - Document.pdf Philosophy of Education in Oman - Research Paper.pdf What Japan can learn from the Oman educational system.pdf Page 31 of 32  REFERENCES 1. Introduction to Logic, Irving M.Copi, Carl Cohen, First Indian reprint, 2001, Pearson Education Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, ISBN: 81-7808-486-4 2.Theory and Problems of Logic, John Nolt, Dennis Rohatyn & Achille Varzi, 2007, Mc Graw Hill Companies,Inc.,Higher Education, New York, ISBN-10:0--07-058917-8 3. Logical Reasoning, Bradley H. Dowden, 2011, 2019, Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, California, USA, ISBN-0-534-17688-7. 4. Introduction to Logic, Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen, Kenneth McMahon, Fourteenth Edition, Pearson New International Edition, 2014, ISBN 10: 1-292-02482-8, ISBN 13-978- 1-292-02482-0. Library + Online Resources: Open Educational Resources: 1. An Introduction to Philosophy, W. Russ Payne, Bellevue College, 2015. https://www.oercommons.org/courses/an-introduction-to-philosophy-3/view 2. http://moodle.asu.edu.om/moodle/course/view.php?id=29 3. https://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/dowdenb/4/Logical-Reasoning.pdf> Page 32 of 32