When Aristotle defined the human being as the animal endowed with the word (logos), he meant that only we can carry out a process of abstracting the physical world through language. Language enables us to communicate, abstract thinking, naming things and objects, scientific study, the creation of the arts and the entire social and political organization of our world. However, for it to work properly, language also needs rules.
And the linguistic logic, a field of study inherent to Philosophy, which focuses on the formal linguistic organization, trying to establish the necessary mode so that the language itself can work properly in each case specific. Not only through language, logic as an understanding and rational organization of Forms is also dedicated to establishing causal nexuses within mathematics. That is, for a result of a mathematical calculation to be correct, the mathematician or the machine that performs the operation must comply with a formal standard that respects the rational rules, thus entering the scope of mathematical logic.
Aristotle, a disciple of Plato, was the first philosopher in history to try to understand and clearly establish the fundamentals of linguistic logic, leaving for posterity a set of writings known as aristotelian logic or classical logic. In these writings, we can find ways to understand the reasonings deductive and inductive in language by syllogisms, as well as we found the aristotelian square, which is a framework for exposition and qualification of linguistic elements that, combined in certain ways, cause agreement or disagreement in speech, for example.
THE logic, as a study and identification of valid and correct forms of language, is also dedicated to identifying and qualifying what does not have a formal validity cohesive and correct. The word that names these situations of non-correction of the form of what was enunciated by the language is fallacy. The fallacies are, broadly speaking, meaningless propositions, without a logical link between the stated facts or without causal links that fully and correctly explain the effects that appear in the statements of the sentences analyzed.
In the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Gottlob Frege revolutionized existing logic by addressing the need for a greater mathematical understanding of logic studies. He developed a method called predicate calculation, which analyzes linguistic propositions through mathematical deductive processes.
Frege's contributions to logic and philosophy of language are considered important until today and without them, it would not have been possible to have created computer programming code capable of translating Dice encrypted by other machines. This means that, without the logical theoretical apparatus left by Frege, the British mathematician Alan Turing, considered the “father” of informatics and computers, could not have built the first computer of history.
* Image credit: Lenscap Photography / Shutterstock.com
by Francisco Porfirio
Graduated in Philosophy
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/filosofia/o-que-logica.htm
