Informal Reasoning & Logical Formalization
نویسنده
چکیده
In ever so many philosophical introductions to formal logic the latter is presented as the philosopher’s ars iudicandi, i. e. as the instrument that evaluates the quality of philosophical arguments or, more generally, of informal reasoning. 1 Irrespective of its content, an argument is only worthy of consideration if it is valid, i. e. if the truth of its premise(s) necessitates the truth of its conclusion. As the validity of arguments hinges on the latter’s form, validity tests must be conducted by abstracting from the content of the argument. According to a prevalent conception of logic among philosophers, the instrument best suited for that task is formal logic. Philosophical arguments are commonly formulated in natural language. Thus, in order to put logical formalisms to work when it comes to evaluating the validity of philosophical arguments, natural language first must be translated into a suitable formalism. Such translations call for stringent justification. 2 Proofs involving the transformation of ordinary language to a formalism are convincing only if they rely on a systematic understanding of the adequacy of the formalizations resorted to. Not any logical formula can be considered an adequate formal representation of a given statement or argument. Standard criteria of adequate formalization, however, indirectly presuppose that the validity of an argument be determined prior to formalizing it. This, in turn, casts doubts on the putative power of logic to reverse informal reasoning, i. e. to expose a seemingly valid argument as invalid after all or vice versa. The constraints imposed by criteria of adequate formalization and, hence, by a precondition of evaluating informal reasoning by means of logical formalisms seriously question the usefulness of formal
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