Beginning Logic [Paperback]

E J Lemmon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1971 | ISBN-10: 0177120401 | ISBN-13: 978-0177120404

The aim of this book is to provide an exposition of elementary formal logic. The course, which is primarily intended for first-year students who have no previous knowledge of the subject, forms a working basis for more advanced reading and is presented in such a way as to be intelligible to the layman. The nature of logic is examined with the gradual introduction of worked samples showing how to distinguish the sound statement from the unsound. Arguments whose soundness cannot be proved by propositional calculus are discussed, and it is shown how formalization can reveal the logical form of arguments. The final section of the book deals with the application of the predicate calculus as applied in various other fields of logic.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 225 pages
• Publisher: Nelson, Thomas Sons Ltd (January 1, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0177120401
• ISBN-13: 978-0177120404
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,742,629 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent logical system., October 11, 2002

By 

"gcappelli" (Oxford, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning Logic (Paperback)

While there is currently a variety of logical systems about, Lemmon's is well balanced and fairly intuitive. His approach is to limit his formal system to a few simple rules. The advantage is that it makes his meta-logic much easier, and the reader can grasp the whole system very quickly. The downside it that the system becomes cumbersome when trying to prove more difficult problems. To help simplify the longer proofs, Lemmon provides a list of already proven theorems, which one can substitute into the proof. His approach is elegant, and in my view, successful. While the text tends to be dense, his liberal use of examples clarifies many of the finer points. Still, the reader does have to work at it so I cannot recommend this text to beginning logic students. Davis' "Introduction to Logic" is much more straightforward, and much simpler. However, for serious students of logic, with a solid analytical background, or a good foundation in mathematics, this text provides a very good logical system.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars jumping right in the pool, March 14, 2001

By 

David Witt (delaware) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning Logic (Paperback)

I used this book as part of an independent study of logic. It is dense, so unless you are willing to sit down and study it exhaustively or you have an experienced teacher (as I did), start with something lighter. That said, once I gained some knowledge in the area, the book was a pleasure to use, as Lemmon's precise language made it easier to clarify certain points. The largest drawback to this book is that it doesn't have solutions to its exercises, and these methods are not mechanical-you must know or learn how to make intuitive leaps or you will not be able to solve the problems. [e-mail]

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible book, February 21, 2012

By 

Michigoon "tech geek" (Mid-MI) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Beginning Logic (Paperback)

This is really an awful book. The advantages are that it's relatively cheap and light, the disadvantages are everything else.

Some claim this book is great because it "doesn't introduce too many concepts" and thus makes things easier to understand. This leaves you with only the most basic tools trying to cover the most complex problems. It's a bit like saying a construction crew would be better off leaving the bulldozer at home and doing all their work with shovels and hammers, because having too much equipment might confuse them. Many tools of other systems which are very intuitive and widely accepted, such as DeMorgan's Laws or the disjunctive syllogism, have to be derived from scratch every single time. It's fine if the book wants to start out making you derive these rules, but when they are first proven, they should then be accepted for future use in the system.

The narrative style of the book is an absolute mess. The author introduces most all of the major concepts in natural English form, and the symbols and definitions of any particular tool are usually buried deep in difficult text, or in an example problem pages later if you're lucky. Any half-decent book should give you something along the lines of a short primer, show the symbols (MPP = P->Q,P |- Q), and then include a text box with the philosophical basis for that statement if such explanation is desired. Imagine instead that a long section of text mentions a variable P and an implication from that variable to another (Q) and the conclusion of this is that the consequent of the implication is entailed. Did I lose you with that last sentence? Imagine 200 pages of that.

The book also includes practice problems with no answer keys. Even if you get the teacher's guide, you only get a partial solutions list. Combined with the difficult narrative style, this book is therefore weak for self-learning. If you're going to be having a class on logic, there might as well not be a book in the class whatsoever, because the teacher is going to have to explain all the concepts for you anyway. If you do have to purchase this book for a class, please ensure that the teacher covers all material sufficiently and works through numerous examples in-class. I had a fair background in logic before starting this class, but due to the lack of tools under the Lemmon system and a limited classroom, I'm struggling to keep up with the material. I have found myself on many occasions seeing a simple solution to a problem that might take three or four steps in any system allowing you to use more advanced rules, but which under the Lemmon system could run to 20 steps. I get so mixed up when I'm inside my third wedge elimination (a truly cumbersome rule) that I can't remember what I was doing in the problem overall.

If you're a teacher looking at this book, skip it and print off your own guides. There are so few true concepts in this book that most everything you would need for a class could be fit onto a two-page sheet of terminology and the symbolic representations of the rules. And for sanity's sake, once you've shown an initial proof to motivate rules such as DeMorgan's, let the students use those rules in future problems. Artificially limiting the class to primitive tools is just asking them to jump through a hoop, it doesn't motivate deeper understanding of the concepts. Repeatedly during class students have noted how they can intuitively see a solution to a problem, but the limited rules of this system confuse them to the point that they are unable to express the arguments despite a deep comprehension of the task at hand.

Overall, I recommend against this book.