reasoning

  • On Making Distinctions

    A Philosophical Happy Hour on distinctions, the doctrine of their kinds, and the importance making them correctly. The failure to make good distinctions characterizes the stupidity of our age.ย  Observe the social networks and see how few distinctions are proposed, how unquestioning the categories, how obstinate every adherent to his or her ideology!ย  How many…

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  • Seminar: Steps toward Dialectical Logic [Fall 2025]

    Announcement of our Fall 2025 seminar, โ€œWhat Kind of Certainty?: Steps Toward Dialectical Logicโ€โ€”have we overlooked an important Aristotelian text and tradition in our understanding of reasoning? Description Details All Lyceum Institute seminars include weekly readings, lectures, and live discussion sessions. The discussion sessions are recorded. This seminar includes extensive readings, but does not require…

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  • How and Why We Study Logic

    Excerpted from the lectures given to the Lyceum Institute Trivium: Art of Logic Course. โ€œWhat more can be said about logic?โ€  I am acutely aware, as I pen these words that I pen them not to be read (even if someone other than myself might and does indeed read them), but to be spoken; to…

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  • John Deely on the โ€œPractical Valueโ€ of Logic

    Peirce rightly speaks of the practice of boasting of the utility of this or that science as a โ€œnauseating customโ€ (1898a, alt. ver. : CP 1.667). This is because the practice in question almost invariably is indulged in for purposes quite unrelated to the true character of the science in question or to the advance…

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  • Trivium: The Art of Logic 2023

    On 1 May 2023, we will begin our second Trivium course of the year: The Art of Logic. Our first discussion session will take place on 8 May 2023 at 6:00pm ET. This course is open toย allย enrolled Lyceum Institute members; having taken Grammar is not a prerequisite. If you would like to sign-up and take…

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  • I.M. Bochenski on the Concept of Formal Logic

    Preliminary definition of the subject matter of the history of logic is hard to come by. For apart from ‘philosophy’ there is perhaps no name of a branch of knowledge that has been given so many meanings as ‘logic’. Sometimes the whole history of philosophy, and even knowledge in general, has been thus named, from…

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  • Trivium: Logic

    Beginning the week of January 10, all Lyceum Institute members will have access to a 13-week course in traditional Logic. Discussion sessions will be held twice per week: Mondays at 6:00-6:45pm and Thursdays at 11:45am-12:30pm (subject to change). Each week there will be an assigned reading, problem set, and brief lecture. Discussion sessions will cover…

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