THE LOGIC OF

IDEALISMBY: JENIFFER C. ATIENZA

Educ 202

Logic is heavily stressed by idealism. Since mind is the prime reality, and since the interpretation of our perceptions and the unifying of our ideas are the methods of knowledge, it is important to master the science of formal logic.

It is a tool by which our thinking can be examined and rendered coherent.

Therefore, it is of primary significance.

LOGIC

Idealist logic does include induction as well as deduction.

Induction- means of relation to nature and society which yields the material with which formal logic must work to be fruitful.

According to J.E. Creighton in his famousIntroductory Logic tells us that the material of logic comes from our social experience.

Material of Logic

There are great number of generally accepted truths he holds which have been verified by a great number of individuals,

“ a perament body of knowledge which no one thinks of calling in question”

Some truths come from two main sources.Some of them comprise the everyday

knowledge of men, And the others have been yielded as

accurate knowledge by the various sciences.

Creighton regards these as really being similar.

Both seek to discover the common bonds linking objects, events and such.

They both try to discover the logical relations by which things and groups of things are tied together.

Inductive and deductive logic takes particular objects

as starting pointbegins with general

concepts or judgments

Creighton underlies his treatment of logic with distinctive belief that

“ the various pieces of our knowledge are never independent of one another, but form an organic whole, like the members of a living organism, that certain facts follow, as we say, from certain other facts.”

Illustration Mortal Beings

Men

Socrates

Major premise: All men are mortal beings.Minor premise: Socrates is a mortal being.

Animals Intelligent beings

Idealist logicians such as Creighton and Bosanquet, being more objective and speculative in their approach are more greatly preoccupied with such phases of logic as those just describe with function at the conceptual level of experience.

Whereas idealists who sit at the feet of Berkeley and Leibniz as much as they listen to the teachings of Hegel will be as much interested in the logic of percepts as in the logic of concepts.

Accordingly they regard science, inductive method and the individual’s own sensory contact with the world as being important sources for the material of logic, the content of thought.

Doubtless they will agree quite fully with the realist and pragmatist in their insistence that formal logic be extended so as to take perceptual values into full account.

Miss Calkins, J.A. Leighton, and E.S. Brightman are representatives of the latter emphasis in idealism.

Plato and Hegel especially, in the beliefs that truth must be consistent and that the demand for unity which most of us feel is deeply rooted in the very texture of existence, they hold that certain general concepts or judgments can be tested by the principle of contradiction, although they cannot be checked by scientist method.

“All rules have exceptions.”Use minor premise.

“This is a rule.”(Major premise)

Examples

All rules have exceptions.This is a rule.

“This rule has exceptions.”Conclusion:

The premise states that all rules have exceptions. And that is tantamount to saying that there are some rules which do not have exceptions.

“There is no truth.”1. There is no truth.

This is a truth.Therefore, it has no existence or validity

2. There is no truth.This is not a truth.

(No conclusion is possible, but to state the minor premise is to deny the validity of the major premise.)

This of course is dialectical method.To some philosophers it is little more than

black magic or sleight of hand.But many idealists swear by it as a method

of thinking which is rooted in the very structure of mind and reality.

Must the truths we believe support and reinforce one another?

Must our thinking be consistent?

Many idealist say, “YES.”

From the idealist point of view the growth and development of knowledge, whether in the individual mind or in the experience of the race, is a matter of extending vision so that individuals and classes are seen in their larger and more complete relationships. To the mind of limited development and to the less mature, experience is a matter of wholes which are accepted quite unconsciously, without any insight into or appreciation of the complex interrelationships which constitute them as wholes.

The more knowledge is developed, the more analysis and synthesis take place, and wholes are seen with deeper insight as being constituted of interrelated parts.

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