Guide to Critical Thinking

Moral of the Story: Emotions Versus Logic
Embracing logical reasoning does not mean disregarding our emotions altogether. Instead, we 
should recognize that emotions and logic are both essential components of what it is to be human.
A Closer Look: Logic: A Human Invention?
One objection to the use of logic—often from what is known as 
a postmodern perspective—is that logic is a human invention 
and thus inferior to emotions or intuitions. In other words, 
what some call the “rules of logic” cannot be seen as univer-
sally applicable because logic originated in the Western world; 
thus, logic is relative and only a matter of perspective.
For example, the invention of chairs seems indispensable to 
those of us who live where chairs have become part of our 
cultural background. But those from different cultural back-
grounds or those who lived during different time periods may 
not use chairs at all, or may employ alternative seating devices, 
such as the traditional Japanese tatami mats. To broadly apply 
the concept of chair as an appropriate place to sit would be 
ethnocentric, or applying the standards of one’s own culture 
to all other cultures.
In response to the foregoing objection, the authors of this 
text argue that logic is not a human invention, nor a conven-
tion that spread in certain parts of the world. Rather, logic was 
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Aristotle’s Organon is a 
compilation of six treatises in 
which Aristotle formulated 
principles that laid the 
foundation for the field of logic.
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Section 1.2 
Three Misconceptions About Logic
discovered in people’s ordinary encounters with reality, as early as antiquity. Based on avail-
able historical records, the first study of the principles at work in good reasoning emerged 
in ancient Greece. Aristotle was the first to formulate principles of logic, and he did so in six 
treatises that ancient commentators grouped together under the title Organon, which means 
“instrument” (reflecting the view that logic is the fundamental instrument for philosophy, 
which will be discussed later in the chapter).
Importantly, other civilizations have developed logic independently of the Greek tradition. 
For example, Dignaga was an important thinker in India who lived a few hundred years after 
Aristotle. Dignaga’s work begins with certain practices of debate within the Nyaya school of 
Hinduism and transitions to a more formal approach to reasoning. Although the result of Dig-
naga’s studies is not identical to Aristotle’s, there is enough similarity to strongly suggest that 
basic logical principles are not merely cultural artifacts.
In the Middle Ages, Aristotelian logic was brought to the West by Islamic philosophers and 
thus became part of the scholarship of Christian philosophers until the 14th or 15th century. 
The emergence of modern logic did not take place until the 19th and 20th centuries, during 
which new ways of analyzing propositions gave rise to new discoveries concerning the foun-
dations of mathematics, as well as a new system of logical notation and a new system of logical 
principles that replaced the Aristotelian system.
Thus, the examination of good reasoning was fundamental in the development of human civi-
lization. Logical reasoning has helped us to identify the laws that guide physical phenomena, 
which brought us to the state of technological advancement that we experience today. How 
else could we have erected pyramids and other marvels in the ancient world without having 
discovered a principle for checking the accuracy of the geometry employed to design them?