I would really like to know what logic is. The Stanford Encyclopedia of

I would really like to know what logic is. The Stanford Encyclopedia of

I would really like to know what logic is. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has TOO MANY articles on logic for someone like me. Let me list most of them: action logic, algebraic propositional logic, classical logic, combinatory logic, combining logic, connexive logic, deontic logic, dependence logic, dialogical logic, dynamic epistemic logic, epistemic logic, free logic, fuzzy logic, hybrid logic, independence friendly logic, inductive logic, infinitary logic, informal logic, intensional logic, intuitionistic logic, justification logic, linear logic, logic of belief revision, logic of conditionals, logical consequence, logical pluralism, logical truth., many-valued logic, modal logic, non-monotonic logic, normative status of logic, paraconsistent logic, propositional dynamic logic, provability logic, relevance logic, second-order and higher-order logic, substructural logic, temporal logic. I have started reading some of these articles, but I still didn't find an answer for my basic question. In some of these articles, a logic (<i>a</i> logic!) seems to be just a bunch of symbols intended to represent reasoning. But some other times I get the idea that logic intends to discover what is good reasoning. In any case, why are there so many different logics? Are they all necessary or useful? Don't computers use just one kind of logic? Truth is that if my children (6 and 8 y.o.) ask me what is logic, I don't know what to tell them....

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