– How people learn to think logically? Is there any limits to possible logical thinking, depending on age?
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Reading a lot is probably the best way. Meditation could probably help though I have no use for it. It’s a skill but some people don’t have to consciously try to get better at it.
we all have the innate ability/capacity for logic or reason; however its a learned skill that needs to be developed and practiced.
a lot of the ability to think logically will come from how the child is raised. a child can apply basic logic which will develop into deeper reasoning…..but if that same child is deprived of learning how to think they may never develop a true sense of logic.
One of the main logic barricades people built up from early childhood and carried through to adulthood is prescriptive parenting or authoritarian teaching styles where the answer to “Why does X do what X does?” is “Because I said so”, it’s an attempt to teach you the “facts” as they want to perceive them (or how they themselves were taught) by rote while teaching you nothing, it’s more akin to a drill instruction of a belief.
Reasoning comes from checking your assumptions (all of them) and questioning everything, possibly with a good teacher who’ll guide you with a light touch or just by being curious enough to drill down through a subject and find out the “Why” and “How” for yourself.
Logic is to learn to attach causality ie associating some outcome with some event in the broadest sense. So even young babies might “learn” to associate certain behaviors with certain outcomes. This develops into things like object permanence which means they “know” that if a cookie is placed in a box, opening the box reveals the cookier. This is all basic logic in action.
Well yes, toddlers can probably not reason logically beyond one or two steps. It would be difficult to teach a formal logic based on symbols and this makes it difficult to describe more complicated manipulation of symbols to demonstrate logic based outcomes.
But to learn things like social norms or even basic counting and vocabulary requires some kind of logical association.
On the one hand, there’s a long tradition of formal logic that someone can study. It details exactly when and why certain premises or combinations of premises imply certain conclusions. In principle, someone can “learn to think logically” by reading a book or taking a class on those concepts.
On the other hand, people rarely “think logically” by carefully applying these formal concepts. Sometimes this is because the casual definition of thinking logically can be incredibly broad and include assumed subject matter knowledge. For example, you might chastise someone who opens an umbrella in a lightning storm for not thinking logically, but the real problem is likely a failure to understand what lightning is and how it works. Once everyone agrees on the same premises, the logic needed to draw a conclusion is not difficult.
Second, and more importantly, most people learn a sort of “instinctual logic” from interacting with others. If they make an illogical claim, they are (hopefully) corrected until they learn that reasoning of that kind is flawed. Nobody has to pull out a truth table, but they still get the idea. Learning of this kind happens in the environment and is most effective when authority figures like parents and teachers have a firm (even if instinctual) understanding of logic and frequently talk and engage with the learner.
Learn math. It the best way to learn logic and abstractions.
And home task: why all great philosophers of the past were mathematicians?
Have you ever gone into a public restroom and panicked for a second bc you didn’t check the door sign first, but then you saw an urinal and knew that you were in the men’s room? That is using logic, and you didn’t have to know the logical syllogism to do so.
If you want to learn more about the neuroscience behind this, look for the experiments performed by dr piaget.
He mapped the normal development stages.
A brain under normal condition develops and matures in various successive stages.
For instance, children before 2-3 years old are not capable of perspective taking. If you ask them to describe something, they will think every observers will see the same thing. They can’t comprehend that someone else has a different perspective.
Same with different concepts like deceit (around 4-5) or object permanance (around 1)
Logic and reasoning comes from an area of the brain that matures fairly late. And it matures through experience and practice.
One thing to remember when it comes to “logic” in day to day life is that it’s not actually possible to be completely logical all the time. You’re rarely working with all the relevant information.
It’s easy to start thinking you’re a “logical thinker” and that that makes you “right” more often than others, but that, in itself, is illogical emotional thinking.
The human brain is going to think with increasingly-effective logic as it matures. Learning comes from the ongoing development of the brain–its increased capacity to be logical–coupled with appropriate opportunities to use that logic in the real world.
That is, nature makes us capable of logic and nurture lets us practice being logical.
At age 2, behavior and verbal skills are advanced enough for adults to recognize developing reasoning skills. Developmental standards for two-year-olds include:
– Recognizing when there is a pattern or sequence, such as in items laid out in front of them or in their daily schedule, and beginning to describe what they think will happen next or point out changes in the pattern.
– Navigating their environment by choosing a path of travel that may take them over, around, under, or through various obstacles. Having a plan to overcome those obstacles and, often, modifying the environment to make navigation easier.
– Noticing the weather and understanding how temperature and precipitation relate to appropriate clothing like winter hats vs. sun hats, rain boots, sweaters, etc.
– Recognizing that there are consequences tied to actions. Throwing an item up into the air will result in that item falling down. Hitting another child will result in being put outside of the group for a short amount of time.
However, even though the logic centers of the brain comprehend consequences, the executive centers of the brain are extremely underdeveloped at this point, and so toddlers will do something even when they do not desire the consequence and they are aware of that consequence.
Adults can mistake childish compulsiveness as children being unable to think logically. That’s not what’s going on. The ability to think logically develops before the ability to behave logically.
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