Practical Reasoning In Natural Language

by Stephen Naylor Thomas

Written especially for beginners, this basic manual/workbook shows how to analyze and evaluate any passage of reasoning or argumentation as it actually occurs in natural language contexts — e.g., books, articles, essays, speeches, editorials, conversations. This book presents a general method of “natural logic” by which the logical structure of any argument —Scientific, philosophic, mathematical, political, religious, ethical, legal, “inductive” , “deductive” , modal, semantic, syntactic, evidentiary, etc. — can be graphically represented without; employing traditional methods used in logic textbooks (e.g. truth-tables, Venn diagrams, etc.). It shows how these techniques can be used to analyze a situation involving many pros and cons, and to identify the argument in discourse where the reasoning is obscure, complex or disorganized.

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973