by Spencer Hall, Copyright January 03, 2009, all rights reserved. 4758 views
In the study of logic, there are two basic divisions: material and formal. Material logic is concerned with the content of arguments, and relates more directly to real world situations, as it involves the study of common fallacies. Formal logic, though not as immediately connected to everday things like propaganda, is lesser known but equally important, dealing with the structure and form of arguments. Martin Cothran’s Traditional Logic 1 and Traditional Logic 2 cover formal logic. In Traditional Logic 1, Cothran introduces the reader to a number of basic concepts in formal logic, assuming no previous knowledge of either formal or material logic. The book has a simple structure, and is divided into three parts based on the three parts of an argument: simple apprehension, judgment, and deductive inference.
The first part of the book is the shortest, containing only three chapters for simple apprehension and its verbal expression, term. Simple apprehension is merely the act of the mind in grasping a concept, while a term is the verbal expression of that concept. The chapters about simple apprehension are necessarily more abstract than the other chapters, and may cause difficulty for some students. The second section, which deals with judgment (affirming or denying something about a concept) and its verbal expression, proposition, is far more concrete and works with logical statements such as, “All men are mortal,” or “No football players are big.” It is also the longest part of the book , spanning from Chapter 4 to Chapter 9. Chapters 10 through 13 cover the last part of logical thought: deductive inference, and its verbal expression, the syllogism. The material in this section was more challenging for me, and definitely involves the most amount of thought and work of the three sections. However, it is also the part of the text that begins to connect what has been learned before with making formal arguments. Traditional Logic 1 concludes with a review chapter.
In general overview, Cothran’s work is a good primer in formal logic. It is somewhat dry at points, and I do feel that earlier on, many of the exercises are repititious and just filling up space. But on the positive side, his delivery of the concepts is relatively easy to understand, the difficulty level steadily climbs along with the student’s increasing knowledge without being overly challenging, and earlier concepts are retained by the exercises while new ones are built on. In all, I would recommend Cothran’s textbook to someone who wants a primer in formal logic and is willing to take some time and effort to work through it.
1 • Rob • January 03, 2009 • 12:38 PM
i think simple apprehension is bunk it’s based on a medieval theory of psychology
2 • Marge A • January 03, 2009 • 12:46 PM
Whats that?
3 • Scott • March 29, 2009 • 8:04 PM
The problem is the Thomistic empiricism - Cothran claims that all of our concepts are built up from sense perception. A Biblical psychology would recognize that we are born with innate categories and can apprehend concepts without the animal process of sensation. Gordon Clark, for one, would have questioned the possibility of getting from a percept to a concept. Empiricism is a godless philosophy and is riddled with difficulties.
That said, the book is useful.
4 • Martin Cothran • September 07, 2009 • 1:28 PM
Scott,
Thomas Aquinas said, “Properly speaking, neither sense nor intellect knows, but man through both.” I would be interested to know in what way that is unbiblical. Perhaps making a distinction between different kinds of empiricism, some of which are unBiblical and some of which aren’t would be helpful.
5 • Matt John • September 15, 2009 • 12:33 AM
In the methods of deductive reasoning in classical logic, “transposition is the rule of inference that permits one to infer from the truth of “A implies B” the truth of “Not-B implies not-A”, and conversely”.[1] Its symbolic expression is:
(P ? Q) ? (~Q ? ~P)[2]
The “?” is the symbol for material implication and the doubleheaded arrow “?” indicates a biconditional relationship. ccna training
The symbol “~” indicates negation. “P” and “Q” are components representing statements that form a truth functional compound proposition, where in a hypothetic proposition the first statement will be the antecedent and the last statement will be the consequent. The expression “truth function” has distinctive applications in philosophical logic and mathematical logic. This article concerns its philosophical application. (See also Transposition (mathematics))
Thanks
——-
6 • Brian Bosse • April 06, 2010 • 1:09 AM
Hello Martin,
I trust you are doing well. I think Scott’s position is that you believe all concepts (your third aspect of simple apprehension) are derived from sense perception (your first aspect of simple apprehension). The Aquinas quote seems to say that men are able to come to knowledge through the mind and the senses. I think the root of the issue for Scott is whether or not your three aspects of simple apprehension follow some sort of priority. For example, before one can have a mental image of X one must first have sense perception of X, or before one can have conceptual idea of X, one must have a sense perception of X. If this is what you are saying, then Scott has issues with this. To me, it is unclear from your logic text whether or not you are asserting such a priority. Because of the way you lay it out in the text, I can see why someone might be led to think that first comes sense experience, then comes mental image, and then finally conceptual apprehension.
Brian
7 • Martin Cothran • April 06, 2010 • 11:21 AM
Brian,
Aquinas believed all knowledge begins in the senses. If we had not the advantage of any of our five senses, then we would quite simply not know anything. For Aquinas, sense perception has epistemological priority, and it leads to the more important end of intellectual judgment. I think part of the problem in debates like this is that when you assert the epistemological priority of the senses, some people hear you saying that the senses have ontological priority, which is not the case.
Aquinas is neither an empiricist nor a rationalist: he neither asserts that our knowledge of things ends at sense perception nor that it begins in intellectual abstraction.
8 • Brian Bosse • April 06, 2010 • 10:26 PM
Hello Martin,
Let me see if I understand you. According to your Traditional Logic Book I, it is simple apprehension that leads to intellectual judgment, and ‘simple apprehension’ is defined as the “act by which the mind grasps the concept…without affirming or denying anything about it.” You go on to define another term called ‘abstraction’ to be the derivative of sense perception and mental imaging. Abtraction seems to be the process of conceptulization. As such, I understand this to be what you mean when you say “sense perception is epistemologically prior to conceptualization.” In the same manner, it also seems that in your way of thinking sense perception is epistemologically prior to mental imaging. All of this is what I understand you to be saying when you say that Aquinas “believed all knowledge begins in the senses.” Do I understand you correctly?
Now, as to the difference between ontological and epistemological priority, that is unclear to me. When you say there is no ontological difference between sense perception and conceptualization are you simply saying that in temporal terms they happen at the same time? In other words, in terms of priority, there is no temporal distinction, but rather only a logical distinction? If not, can you clarify the distinction you are making here?
Nevertheless, I think your position is precisely the position Scott takes issue with. His claim is that “we are born with innate categories and can apprehend concepts without the animal process of sensation.” This seems to assert that there is some knowledge that does not begin in the senses contrary to Aquinas. What do you say to this claim?
Brian
P.S. I will be in your neck of the woods next week, and I would like to buy you a cup of coffee if you have time.
9 • Martin Cothran • April 16, 2010 • 11:49 PM
Brian,
I may have missed your visit. If so, I’m sorry, I would have loved having coffee with you.
As to the understanding expressed in the first paragraph, yes, that is generally correct.
But I do not understand which of my remarks led you to think that I think that “there is no ontological difference between sense perception and conceptualization.” I did not say and do not believe that. They cannot be said to have no ontological difference since one is ontologically prior to the other. And therefore it is hard to answer your question.
In regard to Scott’s point, I have no doubt in my mind that he takes issue with my position since that’s exactly what he does in his comment. I agree we are born with innate categories (I would prefer the term “faculties), but it does not follow from this that we can apprehend anything without prior sense perception. Knowledge must have an object. This object can be supplied by ourselves?
This seems to me to constitution a radical rationalism. I don’t know exactly how to assess it, since I don’t see an argument for it, but I certainly don’t think it is necessary to take refuge in radical rationalism in order to avoid radical empiricism. There are other positions one can take that avoid these two extremes, and conceptual realism seems to make the most sense.
10 • Martin Cothran • April 16, 2010 • 11:50 PM
I would also, by the way, love to see the argument by which one would conclude that this kind of rationalism is somehow a Christian position.
11 • Brian Bosse • April 24, 2010 • 3:40 PM
Hello Martin,
I am sorry we missed each other. Also, I was mistaken in part of what I said. Forgive me, and thank you for pointing it out. Please understand that I am taking no position in our exchange, but rather am trying to clarify Scott’s position. You said the following, “I agree we are born with innate categories (I would prefer the term ‘faculties’), but it does not follow from this that we can apprehend anything without prior sense perception. Knowledge must have an object. This object can be supplied by ourselves?”
When God first communicated to Adam did Adam understand God? In other words, did Adam already know the meanings of the words used by God in God’s initial communication with Adam? If so, then this seems to indicate that Adam had some kind of apprehension of the meaning of these words without any prior sense perception. In a sense, one could argue that Adam came hard wired with this. What would you say to this?
You state, “I would also, by the way, love to see the argument by which one would conclude that this kind of rationalism is somehow a Christian position.”
Consider one way someone might go about this. It seems to me that the weakest link in conceptual frameworks that are naturalistic is their inability to account for how things get started in the first place; however, this is not a problem for the super-naturalistic Christian worldview. Within the Christian worldview we have the necessary ontological foundation to account for beginnings; namely, an un-created, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being who created everything and upholds everything by the word of His power. One could say this is *THE* Christian position. Given this commitment, is it possible that God, as creator, could cause you and me to apprehend things apart from mediated sense perception (just like in the case of Adam above)? There is a whole school of thought that would answer affirmatively; namely, those who call themselves ‘reformed epistemologists’ such as Alvin Plantinga. They argue that properly basic beliefs, which are by definition immediate, constitute real knowledge. Whether or not you agree with this school of thought, even if the idea of immediate knowledge is possible (and I cannot see why such knowledge is not possible given who God is), then it is false that “knowledge must have an object” when ‘object’ is understood having to do with mediated sense perception. It is on this basis one might argue that the commitment to “sense perception is necessary for knowledge” is un-Christian. The possibility of immediate revelation seems to undermine Aquinas’ position.
12 • Martin Cothran • April 24, 2010 • 4:48 PM
Brian,
I would question whether we know much of anything about the origins of Adam’s knowledge. We know that God created Adam and we know that Adam had knowledge. But I think we can fairly say that the account given us is incomplete, and therefore we cannot say much about the manner in which he acquired that knowledge. It could very well have been a very long time in development—we simply don’t know.
In addition, Adam was unfallen—with an intellect that was not impaired in the way ours is. We don’t know exactly what that entails other than that his intellect operated differently from ours to some extent, making him a poor comparison to ourselves in regard to his manner of knowing. Maybe he was more like the angels: more of an intellectual, as opposed to rational creature. Again, we just don’t know.
Of course it is “possible that God, as creator, could cause you and me to apprehend things apart from mediated sense perception.” With God all things are possible. But nothing in particular necessarily follows from that truth.
In regard to Plantinga’s argument, it has been a while since I read it. Maybe you could summarize it and we could talk about it. In the meantime, I find the mere fact that Plantinga holds the position to be a poor argument in favor of it.
With God, all things are possible; with Plantinga (formidable as he is intellectually), I’m not sure the same could be said.
Thanks for the discussion.
13 • Brian Bosse • April 24, 2010 • 5:47 PM
Hello Martin,
I agree we do not know much about the epistemological state of Adam – especially prior to the fall; although, it is not clear to me how the noetic effects of sin would be the cause of a new espistemological hierarchy based on the priority of sense perception. Nevertheless, the point in bringing up Adam was to open the door to the possibility of immediate knowledge. If such possibilities exist, then universal claims contrary to this, like “we cannot apprehend anything apart from prior sense perception,” become less compelling.
You mentioned that my bringing up Plantinga was a poor argument in favor of immediate knowledge. You misread me, which is easy to do as I have already demonstrated. 
I simply was presenting him as a representative of a school of thought contrary to Aquinas’ views. I made the point that “whether or not you agreed with this school of thought”, if immediate knowledge is possible, then it is false that “knowledge *MUST* have an object” when ‘object’ is understood having to do with mediated sense perception.
In the end, Scott wants to argue that such immediate knowledge is actual, and perhaps, even necessary. It seems to me that if either of these positions are true, then Aquinas’ position is false. It also seems that if one acknowledges the possibility of such immediate beliefs, then one acknowledges the possibility of Aquinas’ position to be false. These seem to be at least two things that follow from the mere possibility of immediate knowledge.
I’ll save Plantinga’s argument for another discussion to give me time to brush up on it. I think I have contributed about all I can to the current discussion. I always enjoy our interactions.
Warm Regards,
Brian
14 • JP • April 29, 2010 • 12:24 PM
Hang on here, if we didn’t apprehend things before sense perception we would have no context to interpret the sense itself. If food wasn’t already desirable and pain wasn’t already undesirable sensing these things wouldn’t help us apprehend any concepts at all. Senses are meaningless if they don’t have understanding to back them, and if we could not apprehend anything apart from prior sense perception we would have not framework of perception to build on.
Without some in born ideas good and bad, desirable and undesirable, the most a person would get from touching a hot stove is the nervous reaction automatically taking the hand off the stove, learning anything from the experience would be moot and the realization that that even destroys the body would never be reached.
I suppose for empiricists sensation must equate directly to comprehension, but this belief is untenable as we don’t always immediately understand our senses.
A basic logic must be in-born and pre-exist cognition of the senses as it is the means of interpretation of the senses. From that framework we can build to more complex things from the senses and from raw reason. Simple understanding -> Sensory perception -> Mental imaging or higher abstractions.
Forgive me but I don’t see how someone could make a statement like “we cannot apprehend anything apart from prior sense perception,” without directly and falsely equating observation and understanding.
15 • Martin Cothran • April 30, 2010 • 4:41 PM
Brian,
I’m not sure I agree with any procedure to settle an issue which says that we must refrain from coming to a conclusion because other conclusions may be possible. It is “possible” for any position to be false, including those of Aquinas. But that doesn’t discount the judgment that the position of Aquinas on this matter doesn’t have more to logically recommend it.
But I am certainly not going to abandon my position that Aquinas is right merely on the basis of the possibility it might be wrong. I need an argument that shows it to be unsatisfactory to do that, and I still don’t see one.
16 • Martin Cothran • April 30, 2010 • 4:59 PM
JP,
It seems to me that you are confusing a faculty and an apprehension—and maybe also between sense perception and the apprehension of a concept. The ability to feel pain and pleasure is not the feeling of pain and pleasure, nor is it the apprehension of the concept of pain an pleasure. The faculty of feeling is that by which you feel pain and pleasure. And the understanding of pain and pleasure as concepts is another thing again.
And I hope you are thinking that I hold that sensation “equates” to comprehension. I certain never said that and don’t believe it. I said that sensation precedes comprehension epistemologically. That is not equivalent to saying that they “equate.”
Obviously, we must have a “means of interpretation of the senses,” but that is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is whether this means must consist of knowledge or whether it is a faculty. I maintain the latter. Some others here seem to be saying that is the former. But, again, I still haven’t seen an argument for that.
You seem to be saying that we have actual concepts in our minds prior to sense perception. I don’t normally like using computer analogies for humans, but is this like have factory pre-installed user software on a computer? Or is more like having an operating system pre-installed so that the software can be used in the first place?
I think the Aristotelian conception would be more like the latter.
But again, I think the basic problem in this discussion is the failure to distinguish between epistemological and ontological priority. Consequently, every time I assert an epistemological priority someone misinterprets it as ontological priority. Until that is understood, it is very difficult to have a conversation about this.
17 • Brian Bosse • May 01, 2010 • 1:18 AM
Hello Martin,
It was not my intention to take any position in this discussion regarding Thomism or your commitment to it, and I certainly never asked you to abandon it. Rather, I was simply trying to clarify what I thought might be Scott’s concerns.
With that said, in the course of our discussion we did agree that it was not contradictory to the nature or ability of God for God to be able to communicate knowledge immediately to His creatures. This became the foundation for the idea that such immediate knowledge is possible. This then led to what seemed to me to be an important consequence. I made the point twice earlier, and will make it once more in a more explicit manner (a Modus Tollens argument).
Premise 1: If all knowledge must have an object mediated though sense perception, then immediate knowledge is not possible.
Premise 2: It is not the case that immediate knowledge is not possible.
Conclusion: It is not the case that all knowledge must have an object mediated through sense perception.
Is this conclusion not significant to the discussion? Is it true that all knowledge is necessarily mediated through the senses? Now, I will take a position. In the end, it seems to me that a commitment against the actuality of immediate knowledge is arbitrary and probably wrong. For exmaple, I am not sure how my knowledge of my mental states depends on mediated sense experience. I do not reject the idea of being able to gain real knowledge through mediated sense experience. I simply reject the necessity of mediated sense experience for knowledge. To use your words, “I need an argument that shows it to be unsatisfactory to do that, and I still don’t see one.”
18 • JP • May 03, 2010 • 10:43 PM
My point isn’t simply that we must have a means of interpertation of the senses, but that such a means requires basic points of reference to build on.
If in you’re analogy programing equates to knowledge then what I’m talking about isn’t mere software but the BIOS, built in programming that lets the computer connect and interpret the hardware drivers and allows for more complex code such as an OS to compile.
Every other piece of software, even factory pre-installed software, comes from an outside source (Hard Disk, DVD drive, the internet, ect before it can be interpreted and used by the computer, but the BIOS is programming must exist without outside input because it provides the basis with which to process all other inputs.
I think we are both talking about epistemological priority, I am saying knowledge is needed to establish more knowledge. Knowledge has basic epistemological priority as without a basic context for interpertation senses would be arbitrary. Past that I will agree that senses may come before comprehension. However, even then comprehension can be reasoned into further comprehension without further sense perception. There is no absolute priority, but I assert knowledge is a necessary original priority.
We have agreed senses do not provide their own interpretations. Understanding is not spontaneously generated by a sense. Thus any sense that occurs before the knowledge of how to interpret that sense exists is epistemologically meaningless.
I’m not sure what you’re definition of faculty is, you seem to be using it as a tautology. To be as plain as possible, the ability to interpret or apprehend a sensation hinges on a prior understating of that sensation. If by faculty you mean ‘an ability’ then my premise always has been that such a faculty requires an knowledge base to operate. If by faculty you mean an inherent capability then you have missed my point. I am asserting that some basic knowledge and apprehension is such a faculty which exists prior to sensory apprehension. The two are so intimately tied its actually in the definition of apprehension:
Apprehension
The faculty apprehending
Being innate or natural does not mean it is sensory.
“What is at issue is whether this means must consist of knowledge or whether it is a faculty.”
I assert this is a false dichotomy by any definition of faculty.
19 • Martin Cothran • June 18, 2010 • 4:34 PM
I am in the process of answering these over the next few days, but in the meantime, Brian, do you have a copy of our debate over DARAPTI somewhere? I would love to have a copy of it.
