Re: Derivations (SD)

On 1 Jul 2005 01:41:52 -0700, "1st Semester Logic Student"
<jzarwel@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>One last note:
>
>Dr. David Ullrich, I have seen many of your other posts and in about
>80% of them you act like what I like to call a "prick." Having a PhD
>and teaching/working at a university, you should spend your time trying
>to spread knowledge not flaming posts from an undergrad student in his
>6th week of introductory Logic.

Actually it was not intended as a flame, just as advice on
avoiding certain sorts of silly errors in the future. You're
not interested in that, fine.

>While we are flaming posts, I notice you wrote, "you should stop and
>ask yourself whether that
>makes any sense "logically"." Anyone who finished public high school
>should know that the period should be inside the quotes (i.e.: ask
>yourself whether that makes any sense "logically.") You have a PhD and
>didn't know that? Sad indeed.

Now, this is funny. The reason it's funny is this: Anyone who
actually knows the whole story is aware that there are two
scools of thought on the issue of whether that period should
be inside the quote marks or not - there are experts on both
sides who insist that theirs is the only acceptable way to
do it. Probably you didn't learn about this in high school.

Anyway, the reason what you just said is funny is that the
practice of putting the period _outside_ the quote marks,
as I did (unless the period is actually part of what's
being quoted) is known as "logical" punctuation! Honest,
that's the term that's used.

>The point is, if you have positive feedback and info to help, please
>post it. If you are going to waste my time by posting flames, please
>bite me...

Very curious. You don't seem to have noticed that all the _other_
replies you got were in fact totally nonconstructive, just ironic
or sarcastic: You state two totally wrong derivation rules, people
reply with statements like "That must be an interesting text you're
using", etc, and that doesn't bother you. My reply actually _was_
an attempt to help you in the future, and you tell me to bite you.

Let me try again. There are at least two things that the word
"logic" means:

(i) Formal logic: The subject you're studying in this class,
with wffs, truth tables, derivation rules, etc.

(ii) Informal logic: A bit of informal reasoning is "logical"
if it makes sense, the conclusion actually does follow from
the premises.

For anyone but a small number of mathematicians and philosophers
the study of formal logic is of no value _in itself_. Studying
formal logic _could_ be a good thing for people in general,
but only _if_ they keep in mind that while the things you
study in formal logic don't "officially" mean anything, being
just a formal mathematical game, standard formal logic is in
fact just a precise mathematical model of correct informal
reasoning. _If_ you keep in mind the fact that there's a
relation between (i) and (ii) that could possibly help you
avoid errors in informal reasoning and help you spot fallacies
in informal arguments you read (for example understanding clearly
the difference between A -> B and B -> A in formal logic shows
that many informal arguments are fallacious, because they confuse
a statement and its converse.)

If you prefer you can study (i) without paying any attention
to the fact that (i) does have something to do with (ii).
But I really don't see any point to that - for almost
everyone it seems to me that understanding (i) without
thinking about its connection with (ii) is totally pointless,
it's not going to be of any use to you except in helping
you pass a course.

That's one point to what I said yesterday. The other point
is something I've already said - I'm going to say it again,
whether you want me to or not: Keeping in mind the fact that
(i) is just a mathematical model of (ii) _should_ help you
get (i) straight. _If_ you're doing nothing but try to
memorize meaningless rules then you'll be much more likely
to get them wrong, as you did, because meaningless things
are much harder to remember than things that make sense -
on the other hand if you keep in mind that these things
_are_ supposed to make sense then you'll be less likely
to say that A -> B implies A.

Or so it seems to me - I could be wrong about all that,
but when you complain about my "flame" you're simply
missing my point entirely.

Good of you to inform me that I should spend my time trying
to spread knowledge. Ignoring the fact that you have no
more business telling me how I should spend my free time
than I have telling you what movies to see in _your_
free time, "trying to spread knowledge" is exactly what
I was doing. I'm tempted to add that _you_ should try
to grow up a bit, but that would be a flame, so never mind.

************************

David C. Ullrich
.

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