What about using statements in arguments?

 

We trace our tradition to Aristotle and Syllogistic Logic.

 

There is deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning. All of which depends on the same basic analysis of what statements are and what it means for a statement to be true or false.

 

We may certainly use the words "true" and "false" in other ways in other language games. A lover can be true or false, yet we would certainly not consider a lover a statement. Many talk of sacred scripture as being true or false. In one language game  they may be playing there may be no consideration of the Bible as a "statement" or even set of statements. Is the Britannica Encyclopedia true or false? In another sense it may be said that sacred scripture is true and mean that every sentence in the material is considered literally true.  This has been handled very well by Saint Thomas Aquinas.

 

The end result is that we have a mathematical way of treating the language we use within the context of the language games we use to describe our metanarratives.

 

In this sense, we can say what metanarratives "hold together" in a logical sense. We can also tell what metanarratives are confusing or lead to cognitive dissonance. So logic is one tool we can use to evaluate which metanarratives are better than others.

 

This is why logic was traditionally a priority in the learning process.

 

With Logic as one tool to evaluate our metanarratives, we can now ask, are there other such tools?

 

Next