Arguments based around “formal logic”
An argument based around “formal logic” generally takes the form of a series of premises and a conclusion. For example:
- Premise one: a good singer always sings in tune
- Premise two: Madonna always sings in tune
- Conclusion: Therefore, Madonna is a good singer
N.B. if you’re interested in formal logic, then you’ll be interested in aMap – which are arguments based around informal logic. You can check these out here – or make your own here.
Logical form
According to wikipedia, logic is generally accepted to be formal, in that it aims to analyse and represent the form (or logical form) of any valid argument type. The form of an argument is displayed by representing its sentences in the formal grammar and symbolism of a logical language to make its content usable in formal inference. If one considers the notion of form to be too philosophically loaded, one could say that formalizing is nothing else than translating English sentences in the language of logic.
This is known as showing the logical form of the argument. It is necessary because indicative sentences of ordinary language show a considerable variety of form and complexity that makes their use in inference impractical. It requires, first, ignoring those grammatical features which are irrelevant to logic (such as gender and declension if the argument is in Latin), replacing conjunctions which are not relevant to logic (such as ‘but’) with logical conjunctions like ‘and’ and replacing ambiguous or alternative logical expressions (’any’, ‘every’, etc.) with expressions of a standard type (such as ‘all’, or the universal quantifier ∀).
Second, certain parts of the sentence must be replaced with schematic letters. Thus, for example, the expression ‘all As are Bs’ shows the logical form which is common to the sentences ‘all men are mortals’, ‘all cats are carnivores’, ‘all Greeks are philosophers’ and so on.
