– How people learn to think logically? Is there any limits to possible logical thinking, depending on age?
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Any undergraduate at an American university can take a course in the Philosophy department called something like ‘Introduction to Logic’ and learn the basic Aristotelian rules for deriving conclusions from premises. Such courses often begin by presenting the *classic logical fallacies* which, once you learn them, you’ll start spotting them everywhere online and in print.
Hopefully. But offering rage and accusations of corruption (projecting) has worked better so far than many sane persons would have expected, so…
I’m thinking that strong emotions play an inhibitory role to logical thinking processes.
I was listening to The NPR Politics Podcast: Not Mad, Just Disappointed: Hear From Unenthused Voters, where a focus group panel of 12 people were being asked about Trump and Biden.
One lady in particular stood out to me and I found it fascinating how her logic was modified on the fly.
First she had answered that if it was head to head between Biden and Trump, she would pick Trump.
Later the facilitator asked her if she agreed with Trump that all illegals/undocumented persons should be deported. She answered with a firm yes. Then the facilitator asked her how would she go about deporting them, defining them as men, women, and children. The lady said that she didn’t know but there should be some form of path to be able to stay legally.
I was very surprised to hear the facilitator question her answer respectfully but firmly, pointing out the inconsistency of her answer, saying that there was a huge difference between deport them all and a path to stay. The lady then said she didn’t know what should be done.
You can do logic puzzles. They are kind of like Clue, the way you cross reference and eliminate information until you are left with the only logical solution.
You can read up on logical fallacies. Then when you recognize a fallacy being committed, you can recognize the flaw in the argument. For example, if someone is attacking a politician, and they say x policy is terrible, but they don’t have a reason other than the politician is an idiot, that is an ad hominem attack, not one that deals with the policy in question.
I think most Intro to Philosophy classes touch on logic, should give you a framework if you look up recommended reading or Khan Academy. Most will probably start you with Plato’s “The Cave.”
I do think people become more set in their ways as they age. I don’t think it’s ever too late to start thinking critically and examine and re-examine beliefs as you age. Some people are life-long learners and others feel they have nothing to learn. It’s going to come down to individual mindset at the end of the day.
I believe that the national decline in logical reasoning (HUUUUGGGE generalization, I know) can be attributed, in part, to the decline in language instruction (you know, the old-school, diagramming sentences kind of grammar lessons).
In high school, I was required to take four years of Latin. While it did not provide me with a grounding in a conversational, “useful”language, my education in Latin gave me four terrific advantages:
1. I was able to pick up related “Romance” languages very easily (PS. Romance = related to the Roman language, not the love language)
2. My English vocabulary was vastly improved due to so many English words being derived from Latin or one of its related tongues
3. I learned how to memorize! Latin has many different cases, declensions, voices, etc. and all those endings and uses need memorizing
And finally, 4. Latin teaches logical reasoning. This is the big one. English grammar taught the same kind of thought processes, too (not as intensively), but Latin was the granddaddy of learning to suss-out the way individual words are constructed and placed in order to create meaning.
The move to “holistic” language instruction helped us learn how to communicate on vacation. It traded away the nitty-gritty “behind-the-curtains” real reason for learning a language.
ELI5 (seriously): How do people NOT think logically?
Like “I believe something even with contradictory information” or “I believe two mutually exclusive things are true at the same time”.
Just wanted to add to what others have said. People are also predictably irrational. Even the absolute brightest and logical people in the world will be irrational given an outside factor. This has been studied so well that you can actually use these stats to predict what people will do in certain situations. Logic is a tool but when presented with certain factors, we forget how to use that tool.
I’ll give you a simple but dumb example. I like to think I’m a pretty logical person. I am an engineer and by nature need to think logically for my job. I know how elevators work, I know the statistics of elevators, I know how safe they are, I know how many redundancies they have. I am terrified of elevators and if I’m in one and it stops, I will become very irrational. Take that situation, by all facts presented, logically I shouldn’t be scared. I can actively recognize this but it doesn’t change my irrational feeling about elevators. One factor for this is that I’m claustrophobic, so in that situation my claustrophobia trumps my logical thinking.
To me, logic is the culmination of trial and error WHILE ALSO learning from others mistakes AND being able to transfer experiences to new challenges. It requires thinking about short and long term outcomes, cause and effect, how it will affect others, and evaluating input vs outcomes of each situation. You have to learn and use that knowledge for the next project/ interaction whatever that maybe.
So this is a lot but I think I kept it mostly ELI5
TLDR: A lot of logic is just understanding and identifying what your problem is, what the solution/goal is, and steps between them. Since logic can be applied to anything, your problem and goals can be anything, big or small.
I’m not sure what the exact science is.
I loved math and spent most of my time doing that growing up. So if I had to pin it to a school subject then it’s probably that for me, algebra in particular. I also spent a lot of time just tinkering with stuff and not caring as much if I broke something. Being able to break something and it be a test and learning opportunity instead of a failure, I think helps too.
There are also actual logic courses to look at. But even being logical minded it was tough sometimes with it being somewhat abstract.
I think tinkering and math are big though because most of what we create IS logical. Because it’s typically most efficient, based on math and science.
A good practice is to look at a problem and try to work your way through it step by step, or if you’re having trouble, backwards step by step. Because each will give you the same outcome typically (algebra)
Take a sandwich for example.
which step do you do first?
you don’t slap the pieces of bread together first because there’s nothing on them yet.
okay so we need to put our ingredients on the bread.
Let’s say it’s a pb and j.
how are we getting the ingredients on the sandwich? our hands? no. with a knife
so let’s get out a knife.
ok I have my peanut butter on the knife but I forgot to get my bread out. maybe we should have done that first before getting pb on my knife.
that’s a perfect example of logic. Assuming you didn’t just forget, people typically understand that you need to HAVE bread to be able to put something ON the bread. Most people understand basic logic because it’s typically the LOGICAL way to approach a problem lol.
Another example of working forwards and backwards:
the goal is to get your dirty clothes into the wash. If you’re about to do laundry and there’s already a clean load still in the wash that just finished.
The first step is not to throw the dirty in the wash with the clean, it’s to move the clean to the dryer.
Well we’ve been doing a lot of laundry today so there’s clothes in the dryer as well that just finished too. Do we stick our wet clean clothes in the dryer with the dry clothes that just finished? We could I guess but that’s kind of inefficient if they all fit in there at all. Instead let’s take out the dry clothes first and put those somewhere.
So in that example, the first step in our goal of getting dirty clothes into the wash was to remove the clean clothes from the dryer.
Then move the clean wet clothes to the dryer so the wash is empty for our next load.
That is logical. It satisfied our primary goal of getting the laundry done, but more importantly (to logic) also accomplished our hidden goal of doing it the most efficiently.
If you do it that way, you understand logic and didn’t really even think about it.
You understand your GOAL is to have clean clothes. Your secondary goal is to not do any extra work. And your other secondary goal is to not waste time and resources. Or those are my goals. Depending on someone’s financial situation, the order changes.
Logic is deciding what your goal is and using the least resources possible (because that it usually the inherent hidden goal). Or if your goal is to take as long as possible than everything is the opposite. Or if your goal is to only get your clothes physically in the washing machine and you don’t care about efficiency or if they get clean, etc, then you just go and throw them in there regardless of if there’s anything else in there.
It’s all about identifying what the goal/s is and identifying what steps will get you to that goal. Goals can be anything though which I think people don’t realize.
If I’m driving and someone pulls out in front of me whatever my current goal WAS, it has then changed and become “don’t hit the car that just pulled out in font of me” because my inherent daily goal is to stay alive. So our newly updated goal is to not hit the other car, what are the right steps to take that satisfy all of our objectives, etc.
Most people have at least the basics of logic, they just have trouble with or don’t spend the time to think about what their objective actually is or working through their problem step by step.
Back to your question, even based on the definition we just created, this can apply to any age assuming they are cognitive.
Even todlers have goals.
One is to be fed. Even if they don’t know that they’re hungry, they still feel that sensation and they dont like it. They don’t know the solution of getting their own food yet. And their list of abilities is still very small. So the most effective is cry and scream until food is magically placed like last time.
There is also a danger to logical thinking.. Some people think that being like spock would be an advantage bit in reality it would be a nightmare of paralysis. Our emotions have developed to protect us from that paralysis. Imagine being g a person on the plains and you see a panther creeping up on you and you start thinking logically about which would be the best direction to run. Should I go down by the river or towtads the trees? If I go by the river I might be able to swim but on the other hand. .by this time your being snacked on by the panther. Our emotions are designed to to make quick decisions that you don’t need to think about. Logic is really only useful in a very small percent of our decisions.
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