Dr Greg Bahnsen - Critical Thinking: Theology of Argument (Part 2)

Hey, we were looking at biblical justification for reasoning, and we Just considered Matthew 16, verses 2 and 3, where Jesus calls on his hearers to apply their reasoning ability. Another way in which we can see the biblical justification for reasoning moving to another point is the Bible shows us the need for disputing with people, arguing with people about things. Consider Acts 17, verse 17, Acts 17:17. This is Paul at the center in the capitol of the philosophical world of his day, Athens. And we read in verse 17 therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the market place daily with them that met with him. So Paul disputed with people, he reasoned and argued with people. Or Acts 19, 8, 9. And he went into the synagogue and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God. And when divers were hardened and believed not, but spake evil of that way before the multitude, he departed from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the school of one Tyrannus. So Paul's ministry involved disputation, argumentation, persuasion. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 that we should be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in us. To anyone who asks us to give a reason for the hope that is in us means we're going to be reasoning with them. 2nd Corinthians 10:5. Paul there tells us that we're to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, Christ casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. So we need to be logical if we're going to discipline our thinking to be subject to the obedience of Christ. And we're going to use that disciplined thought to cast down high imagination or reasonings exalted against the knowledge of God. Then one more way in which I would suggest we can see the biblical justification for reasoning is that in the Bible theological reasoning is exemplified, and any number of illustrations might come to mind. I'll just use a couple or three here. Mark 2:28. The use of implication. Mark 2:28. Jesus has said in the 27th verse preceding the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. Then look at verse 28. Therefore the son of man is moored also in the Sabbath. The thrust of therefore an implication is being drawn. So theological reasoning that we find in the Bible exemplifies the use of logic, or if you want hypothetical argumentation, can be found in the Bible, Romans 4, verse 2. For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God. Paul's argument is based on what we call a hypothetical line of reasoning. If Abraham were justified by works, then it would follow that he had entered the glory to be proud. Look at Romans 5, verse 15. For if through the offence of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many. If then, if then. Or another example that will come to mind if you think about it First Corinthians 15, where Paul says, if Christ be not risen, then your faith is vain. Vain. He's using a form of argument and it would go like this. Your faith is vain if Christ is not risen. But you know that your faith is not vain. Or let me put it another way, if Christ is risen, your faith is not in vain. Christ is risen, therefore your faith is not vain. You can work that backwards too. If you say Christ is not risen, then by implication you're saying your faith is vain. So in the Bible we see theological reasoning exemplifying the use of logic. That's what I'm getting at here. This is not just a secular field of thought that Christians are trying to catch up with. This is something we should lead the way in. We of all people should be interested in reasoning in a way that is glorifying to God, which is reliable and doesn't commit logical fallacies. Is logic a neutral tool? I'm reviewing here is logically neutral tool. How do we account for that? We're saying that believers and unbelievers have different laws of thought. You want to explain this? Logic is not a mutual tool. But that doesn't mean that the laws of logic are different between the labor and ungodly any more than hands and noses and the laws of morality are different. It's not a neutral tool because any tool the believer has or the unbeliever has is going to be used to the glory of God or not to the glory of God. So they don't use it mutually. But the laws of logic are the same, are universal for both of them. Is there any reason for Christians to be concerned with logic? Well, if we know the character of God and what the Bible calls for in terms of our being consistent, our using evidence and reasoning, we see the illustration of disputing and argumentation in the New Testament. We even see theological arguments developed in the Bible. If this, then that it should be clear to us that there is biblical justification for the use of argument. Let's look at a theology of argument in light of the history of redemption. For just a few moments here, we've already considered the Christians obligation and need for logic. What would logic have been like? The science of argumentation? What would argumentation have been like before man's fall into sin? Well, even before Adam became a sinner, he had propositional knowledge, didn't he? He knew things which could be expressed in propositions. And he had this propositional knowledge not only by verbal revelation from God, but but also in terms of his investigation of the world in which he lived. Adam was in a situation where he needed to relate what he had learned about the world and what God had told him. And in order to do that, in order to subdue the world to the glory of God, name the animals, and so forth, Adam would have then used a reasoning process. Moreover, Adam, as we know, was created as the image of God. God is the truth. God's mind is the standard of truth. God's way of reasoning, therefore, needed to be Adam's way of reasoning. God and his Word were something of a law for Adam that he was to abide by in terms of what he was to think, all in his other thoughts. So when he extended his knowledge of the world by naming the animals and subduing the created order, he was using logic. But logic as it was disciplined by the presupposition of God's word and the standard of God's own thinking, He was to think God's thoughts after him. Even when Adam was extended, extending his knowledge to the created order. In that situation, the Word of God functioned as a presupposition for Adam. He didn't go out and try to discover whether God's word was true. He took God's Word as a starting point and went out to discover more about God's world. He was responsible. Responsible to argue, to draw inferences. And that responsibility was subject to the authority, the presupposed authority of God's Word. Now ask a question that makes a lot of people argue. Would Adam have ever made any mistakes in his reasoning before the fall? Well, you can say he reasoned in a mistaken way when he fell. But before we get to the nature of sin and so forth, Would Adam have made any mistakes in his reason prior to the fault? Sorry, I'm thinking of experimental. I mean, I'm going to use that as my illustration. Most people would say no. All logical mistakes, all errors in thinking are sinful. And though I think most probably are stemming either from irresponsibility or laziness or prejudice or what have you I don't think that we can automatically say that an error in reasoning is an ethical problem. Because though Adam would not have made mistakes in his thinking with respect to God's word, his presupposed authority, it seems to me Adam could have used the trial and error method of learning about the world. He might have wanted to find out what the best way to eat beef was. One possibility is to eat it raw. Another is to barbecue it. Right? Now, I know some of you say there wasn't any death in the garden, so he wouldn't have done any barbecuing. So I don't know about that either, but I won't get into that. Maybe Adam would have been wondering about eggplant. I would, You know, is eggplant for eating. Well, one of the ways in which he would find out more about the world is going through the trial and error process of trying to eat eggplant. Ever since the days of Adam, the human race was making that mistake trying to eat this stuff. Okay, kidding aside, you can understand that as Adam tried to build bridges or learned to work in this world and to subdue it to the glory of God, that he might have gone through a process of reasoning that we call trial and error. And yet he would not have been sinning. Some may say, well, what if he made a mistake because he was being intellectually lazy or refusing to be consistent with what he had learned? Well, I'm saying that's ruled out. Those kinds of irresponsible responsibilities would not have been found in an unfallen world. So Adam reasoned before the Fall. God's Word was his presupposed authority. He was to extend his knowledge of the world through his reasoning ability based on the authority of God's Word. And yet I wouldn't say that errors made by him were necessarily a result of sin and might just have been resulting in a spirit. He was growing in his knowledge. How about after the Fall? What is the nature of man after the Fall? We've already said that the Fall is ethical, and for that reason the laws of thought are unchanged. The Fall did not mean a loss of information to the human race. God is still known, Paul tells us, through the created order, still known through the testimony of conscience. So man still knows God. And because the Fall was ethical, not metaphysical, he still has a reasoning ability, he still knows God, and he still reasons believing. What's the difference? Adam had reasoning ability and knew God. The unbeliever has reasoning ability and knows God. The difference is right here. In a sense, you can see the use of logic now. The unbeliever tries to use his reasoning ability to say, I don't know God in the broadest sense. All sin and rebellion falls into that description using one's mental apparatus, ability, one's gifts, one's intellect to deny what one knows about God. And so we know that the reasoning process of the unbeliever is sinful. The use of his reasoning is rebellious. He is immoral in the way that he thinks about God. And in that sense he is immoral in everything that he thinks about God's world. To some degree, the laws of thought are unchanged. But now the unbeliever is not willing to abide by the laws of thought if it means he's going to have to face his Creator. The unbeliever will now be willing to bend the rules, reinterpret them or ignore them, or as the Bible says, suppress them in unrighteousness so that he will not have to face and know God. When a person is regenerated, becomes a believer, he still is capable, she is still capable of misusing the truth, not reasoning in a responsible and faithful fashion. We're still able to misuse the truth. However, now we recognize the presuppositional status of God's word. We now recognize our ultimate authority, and our goal is to think God's thoughts after him and to think in terms of God's Word, like Adam, to apply our presuppositions, what God has told us to the world around us, that he might be glorified and served. So we still make mistakes in logic. We still have our own personal perversity or laziness or irresponsibility. We still have the effects of sin, but we have been regenerated. And therefore we should make a better use of logic if for no other reason than that we know the basis for logic and the unbeliever doesn't. I told you a few minutes ago that philosophers like Willard Van Ormond Quine, though they are experts in logic in some ways much more skilled than Dr. Bonson would be, they don't know what they're talking about because they talk about propositions, or they try to get away from propositions and try to give some, I think, really unconvincing explanation for sameness of meaning in terms of stimulus and response and all that. They have to get away from what logic deals with and specifically get away from the notion of necessity in terms of our reasoning from premises to conclusion. Because as far as they're concerned, there's Nothing in this world like necessity or an immaterial proposition. The Christian doesn't have that problem. The Christian knows that propositions are what God thinks, and that is the standard of identity sameness between propositions. And we know that there's a relationship, a necessity between certain propositions and another proposition called a conclusion, because that's the way God thinks. God sees things in that relationship, and I'm supposed to think his thoughts after him. That's the necessity of logical argumentation. If I do not draw this conclusion from those premises, I am not being true to the necessity of God's own thinking. So believers ought to be using logic and using it even better if for no other reason, because we know the basis for logic the way that the unbeliever does it. Moreover, we should be more adept at logic because. Because God calls on us to use logic in dealing with the world. We need to use logic to apply the word of God ethically proclaims word. We need to use logic to persuade the world in preaching and apologetics of the truth of God's word. We need to use logic to indict unbelievers for their rebellion, ethical or intellectual, against God and His word. Now is our use of logic mean that the Holy Spirit is no longer needed in apologetics, Holy Spirit is no longer needed in preaching. The use of logic does not dismiss the need for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works through our logical arguments and preaching our persuasion. Sadly, in the fundamentalist or pietistic Christian community, often you have intellect or logic pitted against the Holy Spirit. And so like, well, since we have the Holy Spirit, we don't have to worry about our thinking process or being logical. And then on the other hand, you have people that think that since they are intellectual and they've mastered the gifts of logic and reasoning and so forth, that they can go out and kind of do combat with the world. And it doesn't really require the Holy Spirit. I see this in evidential apologetics all the time. It's almost like an embarrassment. They'll give their apologetical reasoning all that and say, oh yeah, but then of course, we have to pray for the Holy Spirit too. I mean, there's. There's no real harmony or understanding how both of these work together. Why do we need the work of the Holy Spirit? Though the laws of the thought are the same, the use of those laws is not. The Holy Spirit needs to change the rebellious heart of the unbeliever so that the logical reasoning that we offer will get through to Him. We mustn't expect, therefore, that the defects, though the Holy Spirit uses imperfect instruments, we should shouldn't expect that the Holy Spirit will make up for the defects in our reasoning. It's like, well, the Holy Spirit can do anything. So there's many differences. I make a blithering fool of myself and what I say Holy Spirit can undo all that. Well, Holy Spirit can, just like God can save me from jumping out of an airplane too. He could, but he doesn't say just go ahead and jump out of the airplane. He tells me I'm supposed to live in a response. In the same way the Holy Spirit will use our arguments, but in order to glorify God, we should seek to read those arguments as clean, as valid, as consistent, as persuasive as they can be. So that's just a little bit of a digression on the theology of argument before the fall, after the fall and after regeneration. The last thing I want to do in this introductory lecture on critical thinking is to cover some material that you'll also find very nicely presented in John Frame's book the Knowledge of God, chapter 8, where he has a discussion of logic as a tool of theology. Now, I'm not assigning that. I'm going to actually just go through it and summarize. But that's the source of these remarks, plagiarizing. And also I think you'll find some added insight to things we've already said along the way in this chapter. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but just pick up some underlinings that I've made here. In the beginning of this discussion of logic, Frame addresses the question of whether we should be enthusiastic for logic or wary of logic. Which is it in Calvinist circles or Reformed circles, you can get both attitudes. Those people that will give a polemic against intellectualism and well, they should. They see the need for regeneration and spirits work and that sort of thing. And yet, on the other hand, there are many people in Calvinist circles who latch onto logic as though this is the greatest thing you know of all and any kind of mitigation of a person's following of or adulation for logic, I guess I should say they see as questionable of those who want to put logic real high in the scale of value, and others who say logic's not all that important. And John Frame, I think, has a very balanced response to that. He says, well, logic has its limitations, but logic is a tool of great value and you have to hold on to both of those. It has its limitations True enough. And yet logic is very valuable as a tool. And so he says that it's his aim to discourage both an irrational fear of logic and an inappropriate adulation of it. And then let me read a couple of sentences. Logic is a law of thought, if you will, but as such is subordinate to Scripture, which is our ultimate law of thought. Logic tells us this is the way you should think. And yet we know that the Bible is our ultimate law for telling us how we should think. And therefore logic would have to be subordinate to the Bible. It is Scripture that warrants our use of logic, not the other way around. Now, that's a controversial sentence, I must tell you. Many in evangelical apologetics would assert just the opposite. They would say, one master's logic, and through the use of logic, one comes to warrant his belief in what the Bible says. So logic is the authority in the Bible, then it's warranted by logic. Frame says it's the other way around. Scripture warrants our use of logic. Logic calls for substantiation, warranting, and we find that in the Bible. So the Bible is our ultimate authority rather than logic. And I might add here that that is true, even though in order to read the Bible, one must think logically. Some people say, well, now, if you dismiss the laws of logic, then you can't even understand the Bible and say, well, that's absolutely true. But that doesn't mean that the laws of logic are more authoritative than the Bible, because the laws of logic still call for their own warrant and foundation, which we find in the word of God. The fact that I use the laws of logic in reading the Bible doesn't mean that the laws of logic are more primitive, as it were, than the Bible itself in its authority. After all, when we talk about logic, we have to use the laws of logic too. All we're saying here is that it's impossible for man to think without the use of the laws of logic. But then, ultimately, what grounds man's thinking or warrants man's thinking? And what is it, you know, that we're doing when we think? For those matters, we have to go to the Bible. Okay? Frame now asks the question, what is logic? And his first definition is the science of argument. The science of argument. And he makes a point that I previously made with you. He says, people argued before the science of logic was ever invented, and they argue today whether or not they have studied logic. So he says logicians then did not invent argument any more than than art critics invented art, or sports writers invented baseball what logicians do is study argument, then invent argument, or the laws of thought, what have you. And when we study argument, we are concerned with two things in particular. Frame says something called implication or another concept, something called consistency. So he goes through and he discusses implication and consistency under the science of argument, that is, investigating relationships that are consistent. Relationship of implication. What do we mean by implication? Frame says, often people notice implications and act on them without consciously formulating any argument at all. If a student is in school, you may remember this. When you were in high school or elementary school and the bell rang, you probably didn't sit down and go through a process of reasoning and say, okay, bells are of a certain sort. In this school, bells are used in a certain way. The bell has just rung, and therefore it's time for lunch. Okay, he probably drew the implication without any kind of argument at all. In fact, children sometimes have to be held back. They hear the bell, you know, they're thinking so fast, they're out on the playground or out in the lunchroom immediately. Frame uses a good example of a quarterback. You know, quarterback drops back and he sees what the defense is doing. He draws implications, doesn't he? He sees the implication. Maybe it's, you know, that there's some kind of rush on against him, a blitz and so. And then he responds accordingly. But he probably doesn't go through a long process of developing arguments. He draws an implication, as we say, instantaneously. The study of implication, the study of. Of argument. Well, what I want to say is the study of argument, therefore, is not the study of all implication. There are implications or implyings going on. The event of implying things that logic doesn't study. For instance, logic maps some of those kinds of implications, showing what makes them work and translating them into a formal system. Symbolism. It looks at certain kinds of implication, not the quarterbacks, but other kinds, and tries to map the process of thinking that goes into the implication. And so this technique, he says, focuses on certain key terms in arguments, such as all such. If then I've already told you that these terms have been thoroughly examined as to their force, their logical force. And yet there are, and you must remember this, there are many kinds of implication that have not been formalized in the science of logic, certainly not yet logic. There has been an attempt to develop a logic of beliefs and knowing, that is, the logic of the words, believes and knows, called doxastic logic. In philosophy, there's the development of modal logic, the relationship between truths which are contingent or truths which are necessary. So Forth. But in life, there are all kinds of implications. In the kitchen, out on the football field, when you're driving a car, you're raising children. All sorts of implications that have not been formalized in techniques for studying their relationship laid down by logicians. The second thing that Frame brings up, as he tells us logic is the science of argument is, he says, the concept of consistency is appealed to by logicians. Two propositions are consistent if and only if they can both be true at the same time. We say two propositions are consistent only if they can be true at the same time. Logic seeks to formalize and refine our sensitivity to the inconsistency we feel between different propositions. Sometimes we detect something that's wrong in the reasoning of an individual. Frame uses the illustration of a politician who says he's in favor of law and order, but then he votes against appropriate measures, or so it seems. Appropriate measures having to do with law enforcement actually speaks of appropriation bills, for instance, that might then give money for a law and order approach to society, to improve the enforcement of the laws of society. So here you have a politician who says he favors law and order, but then he doesn't vote in a way that seems consistent with that. That kind of inconsistency is pursued by the logician. We seek to formalize and refine the sensitivity we have to things that don't seem to comport with each other. Logic helps us to translate statements into terms that make their consistency or inconsistency more evident. So is the politician being consistent or inconsistent? Well, if you want will line out the propositions that he has affirmed and propositions corresponding to the actions he has taken, then it's easier to evaluate whether this is a case of inconsistency or not. Frame goes on to speak of logic as a science of commitment as well as the science of argument. The science of commitment. And the reason why he puts it that way, the science of commitment, is that we have this question out there. What is the force of the word must when we draw logical inferences? When we say it must be the case that. And there's the conclusion. Because the premises were the following. What is the nature of that necessity with which logical conclusions are drawn? And Frame says, obviously the necessity isn't physical. No one's pulling strings on a person's vocal cords or manipulating the electrical chemical processes of the brain. It's not a physical compulsion that one must draw this conclusion. And he adds, it's not a pragmatic necessity either. Sometimes logical conclusions are not Useful or helpful or convenient. They don't make life more pleasant or help us do the things we wanted to do. Sometimes logical conclusions make life harder for us. They get in the way of doing what we like to do. And so now I'm departing from frame a little bit on this next paragraph. I would say that the necessity in logic is a conceptual necessity. By that I mean that there's a relationship of concepts that makes the conclusion necessary in light of the premises. There's a conceptual necessity because God thinks in a certain way. This conclusion is related to these premises in that it must be true if the premises are true, because that's the way God thinks. So if you just understand the concept of Socrates is mortal and the concept of Socrates is a man, and the concept of all men are mortal, you would know that the relationship is such that Socrates is mortal must be the case if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man. Those concepts, as God understands them, have that kind of relationship to each other. Then kicking back into frame here. Now, Frame says the logical must indicates a moral necessity. A moral necessity, that is to say, we must think as God thinks. And so a person has an obligation to draw the conclusion. When you have two premises that are true and the form of the argument is valid, in a sense, we can say you are morally obliged to believe this conclusion. Well, what this tells us then, if it's conceptual, God thinks the relationship between his proposition is in this way, and if it's moral, one has an obligation to draw this conclusion. In that sense, logic presupposes Christianity, doesn't it? Presupposes the Christian world, though if you were to suggest that as an opening statement to an unbeliever, you probably get a lot of misunderstanding and confusion and dispute. You should know that that in a sense, the use of logic presupposes the Christian worldview. So that as you're doing apologetics and people get into logic, you can press them back to see that, well, what you're talking about doesn't make sense unless you had a Christian worldview to begin with. And then Framing his chapter does have a section where he talks about the biblical warrant for using logic in theology. And I'll just summarize that real quickly and then we'll be done. He says to communicate the Word, that is the word of God is to communicate the Word as opposed to what contradicts it. I can't tell you something is true about God unless I'm contradicting the opposite. So communication itself depends upon the understanding of this is true and the contradictory is not. Logic's involved in our response to the Word. To the extent we don't know the implications of Scripture, we don't understand the meaning of Scripture. I don't know how to draw conclusions from this. I don't really understand what I'm talking about. He says logic's involved in the assurance of salvation. When I apply Scripture to myself, I have to think logically. And I can't be assured of my salvation unless I can think logically because there isn't any sentence in the Bible that says Greg Vaughan's unsaved. So I have to take what the Bible says and some other premises and think logically in order to draw the conclusion. Frame also notes that Scripture warrants many specific types of logical argument. He looks at how Paul uses the word therefore in his epistles as an example, on the basis of things that have gone before, therefore draw this conclusion or live in this way. And then Frame says, as I have told you, God himself is love. Logical. God doesn't break his promises, he doesn't deny Himself. His word is non contradictory. So all of this to explain what logic is, is the science of argument and commitment, and also to show biblical warrant for it. The last thing he discusses is limitation of logic. Logic is very important. Logic reflects the mind of God, Logic has a moral necessity about it. And yet human logic is fallible. He says, even though God's logic is infallible, human logic is fallible because we don't always apply the laws of thought properly. We don't always think God's thoughts after him. So. So the first limitation of logic is human fallibility. You have to remember that the laws of thought don't use themselves, proclaim themselves. The laws of thought don't develop arguments, people develop arguments. And so logic as it were, the laws of logic do not do the business of argumentation. People argue. Moreover, you need to be aware that in the history of philosophy there have been different systems of logic. There have been disagreements between philosophers over aspects of logic. The law of excluded middle something is either A or not A. The law of exclusion. There's no in between. A not A has been a ripe candidate for dispute throughout the history of philosophy. Some logicians endorse it, others don't. I can give you more complicated examples as well. But the point here is that the history of logic shows that we don't know everything about logic. And there are disputes possible even about the laws of logic. Frame reminds us here of the incompleteness of logic, that the logic that Academicians talk about, remember, only maps the relationship of words like some, all, not, and, or if, then necessity, contingency, possibility, and a few others at best, and there's dispute over those others, by the way. And so logic does not map out all of our language. Present systems of formal logic, he says, are incomplete because not all the kinds of implication and consistency that we talk about in this world have been completely mapped. Fourthly, we can say that logic has its limits because proofs are not enough in order to learn things or to convince other people. We can't learn everything that we know from logical proofs alone. Nor can we persuade people, nor can we persuade people just by the use of proofs. Brain goes on to mention that there are apparent contradictions in our thinking that are hard to resolve. Human logic, in many cases cannot resolve. In the Bible, when we have an apparent contradiction, the Christian's response is not to say, well, logic's the final test, and therefore I've got to throw it out. It's to admit that maybe there are some things which are too mysterious for the human mind, and I just need to be willing to accept both aspects of what the Bible teaches here. And then finally, frame reminds us that when you get deep into logic, it appeals to a technical terminology or an apparatus that's very much like algebra and that's valuable for learning how propositions relate to each other, other, and so forth. But it's not valuable in resolving disputes unless you can agree to how to translate our sentences in English into that logical apparatus. You may know all the rules of inference, but if you can't translate your sentences, you know, if you can't agree as to what this English sentence looks like in the formal calculus, then the formal calculus is not going to help correct any problems in your thinking or settle disputes between you. And I'll end today with just one real obvious example of that. The law of identity is perhaps the most basic law of logic. People will tell you A is A, and the law of identity then would require that any sentence in that form would have to be taken as true. A is A. That must be true. But there are sentences in English that have that form, and yet you're not willing to grant that they are true. You might say, the car is the car, and that seems obvious enough. Murder is murder. How about this? Business is business. Can you envision a situation where somebody would use that sentence and you would say, oh, no, I don't buy that your employer is telling you to lie on the telephone. You say, well, I can't do that, Mr. Jones, I just don't think that's right. He says, listen, business is business. You just go ahead and do what I tell you to do. You say, well, sir, but I don't see it that way. Would it be appropriate? Would it make sense for him to say, oh, you don't know the laws of logic? A is a. Don't you understand? Business is business. That's a case where the word business is being used in two different ways, so it really would not be schematized. A is a. What he means is something hasn't proven anything. But by in English using business as business, it appears that you have this logical truism. So Alframe is telling us here is that the technical apparatus of logic has its limits. It's only going to be helpful if we understand language and how to translate into the apparatus into the formal notation in the first place. So we conclude that logic is a valuable tool. And yet it's a limited tool. It has its limitations. We shouldn't have an irrational fear of logic. We should see it as very valuable. But nor should we have inappropriate adulation of it, as though it's the be all and end all, even in argumentation. Now then, that's our introductory lecture to critical thinking. Tomorrow we're going to get into the subject of language as the tool of argumentation. And what I'd like you to do in preparation so you understand what logic and argument are all about, is read Copie Chapter 1, as well as Engel Chapter 1, Copi Introduction to Logic, 8th Edition, Chapter 1. And Morris Engel with good reason.