CW Diogenes and Logic

[Kim T]

Hi Lene,

I read with great interest your post on the WTM Boards yesterday regarding what we are to do with logic once the books are completed. We are well beneath this stage (4th and 2nd) but I do plan for us to study logic and am certainly hoping that we'll be able to DO something with our studies. As I read your post, I remembered that you were going to incorporate logic books into CW Diogenes (if I am not mistaken). If the students use CW Diogenes and incorporate logic into their writing as guided by CW, would they be well down the road to applying the logic they've learned, in your opinion? Or would there still be quite a gap between learning and application?

Looking to the future,
Kim T.

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Kim,

It was precisely because of our work with CW Diogenes (maxims and chreiai) that I started scratching my head about logic.

Originally I had thought, well, simple enough, we put the maxims in standard logical form and use Aristotelian traditional logic on them.... such as...

"Haste makes waste"

"A stitch in time saves nine"

"Better late than never"...

Well, that is when I woke up. It doesn't work with every day common folk wisdom. Just try to set up a 3 line syllogism on Haste Makes Waste. it is not simple... not at all. You end up with something like

All times that you do something in haste are times when what you have done is wasted.

so that the verb ARE is the copula and the terms are on either side.

Not only does it not easily lend itself to that format, BUT It is not true that ALL TIMES that I do something in haste it is a waste. There are *decidedly* times when haste i s a good thing.

So then the option is to say

Some times when you do something in haste are times when it is a waste... and so it weakens the argumetn by making it particular... and at that point I threw my hands up in the air, pulled at my hair and wondered what the point was.

Well, the point is this.... syllogisms work really well with black and white either/or issues, but when you have as many shades of gray, as much complexity, and as many exceptions as will occur in most maxims, syllogistic logic is cumbersome and not worth the effort it takes because it will not aid in comprehension or in persuasiveness to employ syllogistic logic at this point.

OK; so when is it used.... we plan to use it in our next book in the series... Classical Writing Herodotus. Syllogistic logic will work there because the questions asked in confirmation-refutation essays are of the nature

is or isn't this

true, plausible, possible, credible, clear, advantageous.

In that case you can write a syllogism like

All things that are X are things that are possible
This this particular narrative is X
Therefore this particualr narrative is possible

and X can then be a series of aspects of what it means to be possible... like not breaking natural laws of physics, begin possible in terms of the time frame i n which it happened etc.

In other words... we have revised our concept of when to start the logic and it won't be in the maxim book, it will be in the confirmation refutation book that we will introduce this logic and ask that you study along in Cothran's logic or other equivalent logic book.

Our studies of QUintilian who is one of our Roman gurus shows that Maxim and nChreia as the progymnasmata were the last essays written from the "grammar" stage for kids and that logic came after Maxim and Chreia.

As for whether there will be a gap in logic and application using the CW Books... it will entirely depend on whether we get a handle on the issue beyond Classical Writing Herodotus. My sense is that we will by the grace of God study and not put the book out until we know what we are doing... at least that has been our policy in the past.

Ask away if this wasn't clear enough,

Lene

[Kim T]

Lene,

Thank you for that detailed response! It was very clear, in that I understood you to say that logic will not be covered in CW Diogenes. As to whether I understood the ins and outs of syllogisms and maxims, well . . . one day hopefully. I have camped out at this board for about a year and a half at least and I find myself going back to old posts that I didn't understand at first, but now it clicks. I imagine this will be one of them.

The more I grow with the CW program, the more I see the wisdom in it and thank God that you and Tracy have studied so hard to forge this path.

Kim T.

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Thank you, Kim,

I am glad you are seeing CW as a growing experience. That is what it is for us too. We can get very impatient and want to know it all right now, but the truth is that that depth comes with study and repetition. We're learning right along with much of what we're writing in these books.

I knew little about poetry until I wrote CW Poetry and it opened up a brand new world of literature appreciation for me as I dug in. It's the only way to go.

Lene

[maryinga]

OOH, OOH! This is what we need. I was talking about this very subject today--breaking down arguments of various types: political, theological, or other into basic forms for analysis. We have completed Traditional Logic 1 and 2, but it's all still clear as mud to me. I wanted more opportunities for practical application. Are you saying that CW Herodotus will provide exercises in analyzing an argument at fair level of sophistication then writing to confirm or refute the argument based on logical analysis for validity and soundness?

Ds is 15 and it seems that we are finishing up in areas prior to when the really good stuff becomes available. Part of the problem is that in certain areas of our education I have not advanced into the rhetoric stage (or even the logic stage) so I can not effectively teach and discuss those things to the degree that I would like. I have grown so much in recent years of homeschooling. I think it is safe to say that when I went to college, I had not even advanced beyond grammar stage in history and in other areas as well.

It is ironic that I was always considered a good writer in school, yet I have been unsuccessful in imparting writing skills to my son who is so totally unlike me. He is not a natural writer at all. I never had to break writing down into a process. It was something I just did. After reading various rhetoric texts in the course of ds's highschool education, I have come to realize how little I really know about writing--much less about effectively arguing a point. --Sigh!

Dd, 3rd, will fare so much better in her education than her older brother the guinea pig! I am using CW Aesop and CW Poetry with her, and we both really enjoy them! Thanks!
Mary

[Lene Mahler Jaqua]

Mary,

Thank you for your post. Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I was on vacation.

First of all, I can totally relate to teaching a student who learns differently than I do. It's a challenge to understand what they don't get and then communicate it well so they begin to get the process.

As for CW Herodotus.... the plan and hope is to make connections to logic so that it will be laid out more clearly where logic fits in.

HOWEVER ... and I wanted this in caps ... logic is an effusive animal to deal with. The best analogy I can give you is with grammar. We USE grammar in CW to analyze a piece of writing, to see how the author used it, and to imitate the writing. We can do something similar to that with logic, and we plan to.

BUT... like grammar, logic is so foundational a structure that much logic (and grammar) is done almost "rote"-ly on a regular basis. When you have a discussion with someone you don't break the argument down to syllogisms in standard logical form, any more than you parse every sentence to understanding its meaning.... any more than you read c-a-t CAT every time you read.

What I mean by that is that logic, and in particular syllogisms, are elusive to us. We don't always SEE them in a good argument, and their usage seems antiquated or unnecessarily cumbersome because of the process of getting stuff into syllogistic form, and also because some arguments are so very long and compllicated that to get them into proper Aristotelian form would be near impossible.

So with that caveat, yes, we will cover logic, look at the arguments of passages, recognize the strengths and weaknesses of syllogistic logic in the context of analysis and essay writing, and teach the students how to argue properly.... (in so far as we are able to do so with our more than limited abilities and studies).

Logic and its use in rhetoric, in essay writing, is a difficult connection to unravel, one that I have not see clearly done .... dare I say *anywhere in recent years*?? It's one of the front burner issues we are dealing with for the next year or three as we complete CW Diogenes: Chreia and do CW Herodotus.

Thanks for your question. Please ask away. It is one of my hobby horse subjects.

Lene