HOW TO THINK

LOGICALLY
Second Edition

Gary Seay and Susana Nuccetelli

1/17/2011
 Preface

This is a book intended for introductory courses in logic and critical thinking, but its scope is

broadly focused to include some issues in philosophy as well as treatments of induction, informal

fallacies, and both propositional and traditional syllogistic logic. Its aim throughout, however, is

to broach these topics in a way that will be accessible to beginners in college-level work. How to

Think Logically is a user-friendly text designed for students who have never encountered

philosophy before, and for whom a systematic approach to analytical thinking may be an

unfamiliar exercise. The writing style is simple and direct, with jargon kept to a minimum.

Symbolism is also kept simple. Scattered through the text are special-emphasis boxes in which

important points are summarized to help students focus on crucial distinctions and fundamental

ideas. The book’s fourteen chapters unfold in a way that undergraduates will find understandable

and easy to follow. Even so, the book maintains a punctilious regard for the principles of logic.

At no point does it compromise rigor.

How to Think Logically is a guide to the analysis, reconstruction, and evaluation of

arguments. It is designed to help students learn to distinguish good reasoning from bad. The

book is divided into four parts. The first is devoted to argument recognition and the building

blocks of argument. Chapter 1 introduces argument analysis, focusing on argument recognition

and the difference between formal and informal approaches to inference. Chapter 2 offers a

closer look at the language from which arguments are constructed and examines such topics as

logical strength, linguistic merit, rhetorical power, types of sentences, uses of language, and

definition. Chapter 3 considers epistemic aspects of the statements that are the components of an

inference. It explains the assumption that when speakers are sincere and competent, what they

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state is what they believe, so that the epistemic virtues and vices of belief may also affect

statements. Part II is devoted to the analysis of deductive and inductive arguments,

distinguishing under each of these two general classifications several different types of argument

that students should be able to recognize. It also includes discussions of the principles of charity

and faithfulness, extended arguments, enthymemes, and normative arguments of four different

kinds. In Part III, students are shown how some very basic confusions in thinking may lead to

defective reasoning, and they learn to spot twenty of the most common informal fallacies. Part

IV, which comprises Chapters 11 through 14, offers a feature many instructors will want: a

detailed treatment of some common elementary procedures for determining validity in

propositional logic – including a simplified approach to proofs -- and traditional syllogistic logic.

Here students will be able to go well beyond the intuitive procedures learned in Chapter 5.

Each of the book’s four parts is a self-contained unit. The topics are presented in a way

that permits instructors to teach the chapters in different sequences and combinations, according

to the needs of their courses. For example, an instructor in a critical thinking course could

simply assign Chapters 1 through 10. But in a course geared more to deductive logic, Chapters 1,

4, 5, and 6 and then 11 through 14 might serve best. Other instructors might want to do some of

both critical thinking and deductive logic, for which the best strategy might be to assign Chapter

1 and then either 4 through 12, or 4 through 10 plus 13 and 14.

How to Think Logically, in this new Second Edition format, includes a number of

improvements, thanks to the helpful suggestions of anonymous reviewers selected by Pearson

and of philosophers we know who are using the book:

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• Chapter 1 has been reworked to present a better introduction to argument, the central

topic of the book. The treatment of non-arguments now includes entries for explanations,

conditionals, and fictional discourse.

• A more concise treatment of definition now follows discussions of figurative meaning

and indirect use of language in Chapter 2. Also added to this chapter is an expanded

treatment of sentence types, including speech acts, in connection with the discussion of

uses of language, providing a more nuanced and timely treatment of this topic.

• The discussions of contradiction and consistency in Chapter 3 have been rewritten for

greater clarity.

• The section on evaluative reasoning in Chapter 4 has been expanded into a much

improved discussion of moral, legal, prudential, and aesthetic norms and arguments.

• Many new examples, of varying degrees of difficulty, have been incorporated in the

book’s account of informal fallacies. First-edition examples have been brought up to

date.

• Exercise sections in all chapters have been greatly expanded. Many new exercises have

been added, so that students can now get more practice in applying what they’re learning.

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 As a result, instructors will now have a larger selection of exercises from which to

choose in assigning homework or in engaging students in class discussions.

• The program of the book has been simplified so that it does much better, and more

economically, what instructors need it to do: namely, serve as a text for teaching students

how to develop critical reasoning skills. The ‘Philosopher’s Corner’ features of the first

edition have been taken out, following the consensus of reviewers, who said that they

almost never had time in a 15-week semester to use them if they were teaching the logic

too. In this new edition, references to philosophical theories have been minimized and

woven into topics of informal logic. In this way, the overall length of the book has been

kept about the same as in the first edition, and the price of the book has been kept low.

But many features of the earlier edition have been retained here. There are abundant

pedagogical aids in the book, including not only more exercises, but also study questions and

lists of key words. At the end of each chapter is a chapter-summary and a writing project. And in

the back of the book is a detailed glossary of important terms.

We wish to thank our editor at Pearson Education, Nancy Roberts, and Kate Fernandes,

the project manager for this book. Special thanks is due also to Pearson Senior Editor, Dickson

Musslewhite, who provided judicious guidance at crucial points in bringing out this new edition.

We are also grateful for the criticisms of the philosophers selected as anonymous reviewers by

Pearson. Their sometimes barbed but always trenchant observations about the first edition have

helped us to make this a much better textbook.

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SUPPORT FOR INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS

MyLogicLab.com is an online resource that offers a wealth of tools to help student learning and

comprehension, including practice quizzes, videos, primary source readings and more.

MyLogicLab also includes a rich array of interactive tools enhanced with audio and video to

engage students in learning. Please see your Pearson representative for more information or visit

www.MyLogicLab.com.

Instructor’s Manual with Tests (0-205-15534-0): For each chapter in the text, this valuable

resource provides a detailed outline, list of objectives, and discussion questions. In addition, test

questions in multiple-choice, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, and short answer formats are available

for each chapter; the answers are page referenced to the text. For easy access, this manual is

available at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc.

PowerPoint Presentation Slides for How to Think Logically (0-205-15538-3): These

PowerPoint Slides help instructors convey logic principles in a clear and engaging way. For easy

access, they are available at www.pearsonhighered.com/irc.

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About the Authors

Gary Seay has taught formal and informal logic since 1979 at the City University of New York,

where he is presently professor of philosophy at Medgar Evers College. His articles on moral

philosophy and bioethics have appeared in The American Philosophical Quarterly, The Journal

of Value Inquiry, The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, and The Cambridge Quarterly of

Healthcare Ethics, among other journals. With Susana Nuccetelli, he is editor of Themes from G.

E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2007), Philosophy

of Language: The Central Topics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), and Latin American

Philosophy: An Introduction With Readings (Prentice Hall, 2004).

Susana Nuccetelli is professor of philosophy at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Her

essays in epistemology and philosophy of language have appeared in Analysis, The American

Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Inquiry, and The Southern

Journal of Philosophy, among other journals. She is editor of New Essays in Semantic

Externalism and Self-Knowledge (MIT Press, 2003) and author of Latin American Thought:

Philosophical Problems and Arguments (Westview Press, 2002). She is co-editor of The

Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (Blackwell, 2009) and, with Gary Seay,

Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2011).

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