The Philosophers' Cocoon

5 responses to “Tips for illustrating logic’s importance and application to students?”

1. Anonymous

   August 18, 2026

   I used to teach logic as a general education course in critical thinking. There would be a vast array of students in the class. The computer science students saw the importance of logic … you can exploit that. They not only saw the value in logic. They enjoyed taking a course that was relatively easy for them.
   A lot of the trouble with the claim that formal logic is a means to evaluate arguments is that we humans rarely argue by appealing to deductive arguments. I challenge all of you to tell us the last time you used a deductive argument outside of a philosophy classroom. (by the way, I have analyzed deductive arguments in some of my publications)

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2. Chris Stephens

   August 18, 2026

   For the philosophically and mathematically minded students, you can briefly present Hilberts 1899 axiomitization of Euclidean geometry that uses quantifier logic, mentioning its historical and philosophical importance.

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3. Heather W. Hoyt

   August 18, 2026

   Three thoughts:

   First, I agree with Anonymous that computer programmers easily see the importance of deductive logic (I learned truth tables both in deductive logic and in my introductory coding class). If anyone wants to learn to code, there’s a clear connection.

   Second, when I was teaching basic arguments in an online class, we had an assignment where students found arguments in memes, songs, comics, quotes, political stances, YouTube videos, Reddit, etc. They then had to identify and reproduce the basic argument form. They were creative with what they came up with. I did a similar assignment with fallacies as well.

   Third, my favorite comment from students is that they learned to think in a new way. Maybe deductive logic isn’t always directly related to life, but it does increase brain power.

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4. Anonymous

   August 18, 2026

   Here’s a less conventional suggestion. Show them the clip from the first Karate Kid, where sensei has him painting the fences. At some point, Ralph Macchio gets fed up because he thinks that what he’s been assigned to do is just irrelevant to anything useful. Then at that point, the sensei shows him that after working on all this “irrelevant stuff” he has actually learned some important skills. Once the clip ends, turn to your students and say, “Sometimes we study things like logic that look like they’re irrelevant, but in fact they are terribly useful.” They will get the point.

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5. Sam Elgin

   August 19, 2026

   I’d recommend taking a look at Isaac Wilhelm’s book ‘Logic for Justice’. It’s a good introductory logic textbook – but emphasizes the implication that logic has for arguments concerning social justice and political reform.

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