This week our philosophy teacher, Dr. Emma Wood, taught An Introduction to Logic to the Year 7 class.

Logic is considered the science and art of reasoning well. Logic is traditionally one of the seven Liberal Arts. It teaches our students to think in a methodical way so that one premise plus another and another combine logically to reach a rational conclusion. Ultimately our students become critical thinkers across all of their subject areas – the basis of becoming a good philosopher.

During the class, the boys took turns analysing the deductive validity of arguments and coming up with examples of valid arguments of their own.

In the coming weeks the boys will discover what it takes to formulate a sound and reasonable argument, in light of flawed reasoning. Examples from conversation, news and media will be used.

This class was the first of a series of lessons on truth and logic and will lead into further discussions on epistemology (theory of knowledge), ethics, and Aristotle, one of the “inventors” of formal logic.