LOGIC in philosophy is very TOUGH,i am in Depression? philosophy students advice me please?

Question

i am a philosophy honors 1 year student

i understand western philosophy and indian philosophy

but there is a subject formal logic in philosophy,i cant understand this subject at all,i cant solve problems

how i can became good in formal logic? advice me please

Answer 1

just look at it as a math class that uses words and ideas instead of numbers, but unlike math, outcomes in logic do not have to be concrete.. they describe in probabilities

Answer 2

don't panic.

it takes time.

I really like Lemmon's book.

Answer 3

I think the key is to try to resist the urge to translate.  Because we spend most of our time thinking in terms of our spoken language, or other sensory modalities...it is very easy to make mistakes or assumptions about purely Formal systems.

Be aware of when your mind attributes Meaning to the symbols.  The trick to doing Formal Logic, is not imbuing it with Meaning.  There is no Meaning within Formal Logic, only Symbols and Manipulation Rules.  If you try very hard to stick just to the symbols and the rules, I think you will have an easier time, but it takes practice!

Answer 4

i think nunayer gave good advise. many people fall into the mistake of interpreting the symbols. we became so good at translation that we do it naturally. you need to learn the rules by itself and not add anything to it.

for example, "green and red makes yellow." the statement is not saying anything about color, mixing, product or anything. it's more like string like"3idk dks ane e09l sldo9o."

you get meaning after isomorphism of the symbol (3idk = green, dks = logical operation and...), but that comes way after. first you have to lay the ground rules and declarations. they are just plain meaningless assertions that are taken for granted.

Answer 5

The most fundamental aspect of humans is that we are problem solvers.

Your are saying you aren't human.

Which is neither solvable nor believable.

That said, we learn by doing.  Buy some puzzle books.   Start with the 3rd grade stuff & work you way up.  Get a riddle book. Take a few IQ tests.  Review your algebra & geometric proofs.  Try a few crosswords.   Get a rubics cube.

Good luck