ABSTRACT
Logic is the science or art of good reasoning. Informal logic is concerned with reasoning expressed in ordinary language, with a minimum of symbolism. Formal logic is a more precise and systematic study of reasoning that employs symbolism for the purposes of brevity, clarity, generality and abstraction. One needs only a modicum of symbolism in order to formalize arguments of considerable logical complexity, such as are found in Mathematics. The idea behind finding the logical form of a sentence is to specify exactly how it is constructed from its constituent words, so that there is noproblem of structural ambiguity. The availability of alternative logical forms, for different ‘readings’ of what might appear to be a single English sentence, is crucial to resolving the issues surrounding referential opacity. Modern logicians regard the ‘simple thought’ in question as overly naïve, and as symptomatic of a beginner’s failure to appreciate the alleged advantages of ‘rounding out’ and ‘simplifying’ our formal system of logic.
