The Little Logic Book

Written by four members of the Calvin College philosophy department, The Little Logic Book is a valuable resource for teachers and undergraduate students of philosophy. In addition to providing clear introductions to the modes of reasoning students encounter in their philosophy course readings, it includes a nuanced description of common informal fallacies, a narrative overview of various philosophical accounts of scientific inference and a concluding chapter on the ethics of argumentation.

The book features engaging dialogues on social, philosophical and religious issues based on the styles of argument taken up in the chapters. In additions to core concepts, distinctions, explanations, rules of inference, methods of assessment and examples, The Little Logic Book provides philosophical commentary that will stimulate discussion of the assumptions and implications of various kinds of human reasoning.

Reviews

"[There is] an impossible tension between high and low, from which we seem to suffer in academic textbook writing. ... Textbooks—especially logic textbooks—are expected to "talk down" to students, in the sense of being undemanding, assuming no previous knowledge, explaining all terminology and, in general, being suitably long-winded and patient. The Little Logic Book is refreshingly different. It succeeds in its demonstration of logical topics, from the most basic (like truth tables) to some of the most advanced (like modal logic and counterfactuals) and provides concise articulations of advanced questions and their no-less advanced answers. ... This is an admirably pertinent book to supplement introductory philosophy classes by introducing students to the fundamentals of reasoning of all kinds—deductive, inductive, scientific, fallacious and so on. When used with the exercises that accompany it on the press website, it will clarify these staples of philosophical argumentation in just the right dose at just the right intellectual level."

—Anat Biletzki, Albert Schweitzer Professor of Philosophy, Quinnipiac University in Teaching Philosophy

About the Authors

Lee Hardy is professor of philosophy at Calvin College. He is the author of The Fabric of This World (Eerdmans) and Nature's Suit: Husserl's Phenomenological Philosophy of the Physical Sciences (Ohio University Press).

Del Ratzsch is professor of philosophy emeritus at Calvin College. He is the author of Nature, Design and Science (SUNY Press), The Battle of Beginnings (IVP Academic) and Science and Its Limits (IVP Academic).

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung is professor of philosophy at Calvin College. She is the author of Glittering Vices (Brazos Press) and a coauthor of Aquinas's Ethics (University of Notre Dame).

Gregory Mellema is professor of philosophy at Calvin College. He is the author of Beyond the Call of Duty (SUNY Press), The Expectations of Morality (Rodopi) and Individuals, Groups and Shared Moral Responsibility (Peter Lang Publishing).

Resources

Exercise Bank for Chapter 1: Deductive Arguments
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 2: Truth Tables
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 3: Quantification
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 4: Modal Logic
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 5: Counterfactuals
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 6: Inductive Logic
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 7: Mill's Methods
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 8: Probability
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 9: Analogical Arguments
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 10: Informal Fallacies
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 11: Explanation
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 12: Scientific Inference
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Exercise Bank for Chapter 13: The Ethics of Argument
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