Logic Made Easy : How to Know When Language Deceives You

by Deborah J. Bennett

LOGIC MADE EASY is filled with anecdotal histories detailing the often muddy relationship between language and logic. Designed with dozens of visual examples, the book guides readers through those hair-raising times when logic is at odds with common sense.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Nonfiction, Science, Psychology, Mathematics, Self Help

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[minhhai · Rating 3 out of 5]

A review on the back of the book reads "In this case, you can judge a book by its cover - or at least its title: the author makes a promise right at the start and then follows through by making logic easy for readers to understand." I completely disagree. The book has nothing to do with lessons on logic. It won't help us to improve our poor logic after all. In fact, the book is all about history and gossips of logic: how logic was invented, developed and taught. After reading the book, you'll know that Aristotle and his followers developed the basic principles of logic; you'll understand that the language of logic is different from our daily one; but you won't know how to win the next arguments with your neighbors. Sorry, this book makes you more knowledgeable, but not smarter or more logical as it promises.

The writing is extremely poor: plain, frigid, full of jargon and new definitions. Every chapter always ends with a short paragraph forcefully linking to the next one. You can easily read the formula of her writing. Some chapter titles sound childish, e.g., the chapter about "If/then" structure was named "When things are Iffy". The author somehow idolized Aristotle, Wason, Johnson-Laird and some of her colleagues, by quoting them a lot of times.

The endnote of the book is dishonest! I have the feeling that the author tried to show off her research by citing a lot of texts which were vaguely listed in the endnote. For example, note 0.3 reads "Educational Testing Service (1992)." I bet you'd never find out what it is. Or note 1.2, "Plato (1965)". or note 2.7,9,10 "Euler (1997)". No way to search for those texts! The endnote is completely useless for ordinary readers; and citing them is meaningless. Given the author was teaching college Maths, this kind of presentation is unacceptable.

Conclusion: Misleading and poorly written book. I gave it 2-star for the author's good intention and effort.

[Shriya · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected to be a huge fan of this but was sorely disappointed. It starts off promising, then gets tangled up in itself, then improves a teeeeny bit by the end.

The best takeaway from the book is a framework and outline of 'Aristotelian logic --> present-day logic' to use as a guide. Then go back to the cited primary sources (or logic books that are actually written well) and learn this material in a less puzzling and convoluted way.

The author didn't make up her mind between writing an accessible logic textbook or writing about the history of the field of logic, so she instead wrote a book that is the worst of both worlds. The historical bits are interconnected but not as rich or deep as any curious person would hope them to be. The "technical"/mathematical concepts are explained with very confusing prose rather than with clarity or rigor.

For someone who supposedly studies logic, I find the author's chosen structure of this book extremely illogical. In her attempt to guide the reader from historical ideas about logic to modern ones, she makes lots of statements and assumptions early on that she breaks later on in the book. In itself this is fine, and happens all the time in nonfiction, but she is not entirely clear to the reader about why she is doing so. I found myself reading statements all the time where she said "clearly" this or "obviously" that and thinking "what?! this makes no intuitive sense". Then 80 pages later she would say "Of course our earlier statement is not actually always true!" which was just deeply frustrating.

All in all, disappointed with the way this turned out, but love the topic; would love to see a book with the same goal but put together in a better way, with clearer writing and examples. Maybe I'm just too illogical to understand it! Or maybe I should write that book myself...

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Guess what? Small children have trouble with certain types of logic puzzles. People intuitively care more about whether statement is true than whether it follows logically from previous statements. People don't always spell out exactly what they mean and all the terms and conditions when they tell their kids to eat their vegetables. And because of this everything is tragically flawed and can only be solved by delving into the differences between Venn diagrams and Euler's circles.

Bennett meanders aimlessly between the history of logic, the philosophy of logic, and the psychology of logic, such that any mention of a method or usage of logic is lost.

[Mimi · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title is a lie. :(

[Monq · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well written introduction to Logic & it's standing history as far as it's understood in the west. The book goes more for brevity than depth but presents everything in an interesting mix of history, theory & psychological findings for what makes logic work. The study of Logic itself, whether linguistic or symbolic, is not without it's practice. If one person could read one book & understand Logic, that book is either incredible or the reader is a savant. I felt the ending was wrapped up nicely as to the importance & need for critical thinking in everyday usage more for clearer thought & expression.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like this was titled incorrectly. It wasn't easy. That said, it is a very solid layman's intro to the Logic and it's history. If you are willing to push your reasoning ability some, then I recommend.

[fondre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reason, Type and Setting: I chose this book this non-fiction book because I have always felt somewhat frustrated with my thinking. Most of the time it feels like I know so many facts but I lack the ability to analyze information rationally and draw conclusions from there. I also have trouble trying to think on my own, and as I grow into an adult I think it is important to be able to set up logical principles in my cognition for clearer thinking. Therefore, I bought this book so that I would be able to make better conclusions as I mature into my political, laborious, and whole identity. Bennett helps the reader achieve this by referencing schools of logic from the ancient Greeks to Lofti Zadeh to programming the first computer. However, these concepts have the opportunity to be disproven by contemporary ideas in logic, so the book is updated to what professors teach in their lecture halls. Despite these complex and university-level concepts, this is an informative book set for the nonacademic person in mind.

Content: The book covers basic logic, namely the main ideas of the law of the excluded middle and the law of noncontradiction. Bennett also discusses various Latin-named arguments like reductio ad impossible and reductio ad absurdum as well as terms like “subject” and “predicate” and “converse”. She familiarizes the reader with these abstractions early in the book because they are referenced regularly later on in the book. The author makes points in the book that made me question if she was being logical. She quickly counterclaims me with the laws and vocabulary, which was well thought out because it made sure that I understood the material she presented. The book is significant because of the idiosyncrasies we all have with our own logic systems, and how it plays a role in everyday life. I was surprised to know that I was a victim of the law of nonconversion, which is "Even if all A are B, it may not be the case that all B are A". All mothers are women, but are all women mothers? No. I was fascinated by Bennett to know that even medical doctors, quite possibly the purest form of scientific academia, fall victim to this. She connected this phenomenon to diagnosing patients, and what symptoms signify certain ailments.
Chapter: I found chapter four to be the most fascinating because it discusses the fuzzy logic behind the word "some". Cleverly entitled "SOME Is Part or All of ALL". Bennett talks about how non-logicians assume some as "not none but not all", while logicians assume it as how Bennett put it, "at least one and possibly all". A "some" statement is not universal like "all" or "none", but rather a "particular" statement. My mind opened when I discovered from the book that particular statements can follow the law of conversion: "some teachers are male" and "some males of teachers" are both acceptable statements, or as the proper terms is, identical truth values. There are some instances where we may find a statement to be illogical, like "some women are landladies" and "some landladies are women". Because we know that the word "landladies" refers to female land owners, it is logical to assume that all landladies are women. However, we must keep in mind that the logician interpretation of the term "some" is "at least one and possibly all". This chapter helps with the unity of the book by reinforcing themes about numeration, and what conclusions we can draw from universal and particular statements.
Evaluation: The book kept my interest, but there were some times where I felt that the theories presented were being dragged out to long and over articulated to the point that they were difficult for a non-logician to understand. These moments were rare; minimized by the countless graphical representations and entertaining LSAT example questions. The book, with its academic-though-layperson edge, opened my eyes to the fallacies that I have fallen victim too and has helped strengthen my arguments. Logic Made Easy is a must read for anybody whom has ever wondered if her or his own logic was rational, and should be read by everybody whom will be entering the real world. Logic is not limited to politicians and lawyers, but to anybody that has to fill out tax forms, apply for insurance, driving rules, event planning, medical assessments, and much more.
Trivia: I prefer nonfiction over fiction books, and I have always chosen books on languages, social movements, and gender studies. I decided to buy a book that would be more science oriented, which for me is a leap. I decided to go easy on myself by buying a book that was not straight up mathematics, game theory, physics, chemistry, or too mind-boggling philosophy. Its clean cover, easy to read language, and the fact that she was a professor from an uncommon university, New Jersey City University, was the reason why I purchased this book. I have always thought that a person's bookshelf should not just be from writers living in London, New York City, Vancouver, and San Francisco. Geographical diversity is quite a neat idea, especially in a rather large nation like the one we live in. Now if we could only get some non-London, Boston, and New York City publishers to be more popular...

[Harshil Mehta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started with great enthusiasm and curiosity but felt bored in the last. It doesn’t exactly teach how to be more logical but it covers the history of logic.

The book has good content for novice readers. It has things like Boolean Logic, Venn Diagram but I was already familiar with them, thanks to my engineering.

It is interesting in initial chapters but becomes uninteresting later on.

[Diego Schultz · Rating 3 out of 5]

É um pouco repetitivo em alguns tópicos, e eu fiquei com a sensação de ficar relendo várias vezes as mesmas coisas. Por esse motivo, eu acho que ter sido um pouco resumido, principalmente por se intitular "made easy". Mas, eu precisava estudar lógica, então, paciência.

[ki]

Picked this up thinking it’d help me spot manipulative language or improve my critical thinking in daily life. What I got instead: a history tour through Aristotle, syllogisms, and psychological studies—with barely any practical tools to apply in real conversations. It’s like ordering fast food and getting a museum tour instead. You’ll finish it knowing who invented logic gates, but still unsure how to deal with manipulative language on Twitter.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book title handle perfectly the content, it's easy logic, from ancient Greek to our modern ages, I found it rich and informative as a beginner in the field of logic and its terminology, not too long, not tto short just the perfect amount of informations.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

You would think that with a title like Logic Made Easy, this book would be an instructional introduction to logic, but that's not at all what this book actually is. The subtitle "How to Know When Language Deceives You" is somewhat closer to the mark, with this book being composed of about equal portions of the development of logic as a discipline and discussions of findings from studies that examine how people reason and why they fail to reason correctly so often.

The most valuable parts of this book are the discussions of (a) the inconsistent ways we phrase things and use words like "and", "or", "any", "all", or "some" in everyday life and (b) the (often incorrect) additional meanings many people infer from conditional statements (for example, "if you have the disease, this test will return a positive result 90 percent of the time" does NOT mean that a positive test result indicates a 90 percent likelihood of having the disease). Also, a good number of example questions from various studies and standardized tests are scattered throughout the book, and it can be somewhat fun to use them to test your own deductive reasoning skills.

Overall: If you're looking to actually learn logic, this is not the book for you. If on the other hand you're interested in how language and seemingly reasonable assumptions often trip us up, this book's probably worth a quick read and might result in your becoming a bit more careful in your thinking.

[Harry Harman]

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing to this day, there began an explosion of research by cognitive psychologists trying to pin down exactly why these mistakes in reasoning occur so often.

any problemsolving activity, or what educators today call critical thinking

accepted truths, called premises

Aristotle, who is considered the inventor of logic

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong - ALBERT EINSTEIN

pull the wool over my eyes or slip one by me.

another semimythical figure, Pythagoras, are credited with the discovery and systematic proof of a number of geometric properties and are praised for insisting that geometric reasoning proceed according to careful deduction from axioms, or postulates.

If statement P is true, then statement Q^is true. But statement Q^ cannot be true. (Q^is absurd!) Therefore, statement P cannot be true. This form of argument by refutation is called reductio ad absurdum.

After Aristotle's death in 322 B.C., his followers collected these treatises into a single work known as the Organon, or instrument of science.

"All mothers are parents" is a true statement whereas "All parents are mothers" is not. Yet this conversion is a common mistake. These two statements, "All S are P" and "All P are S," are called converse statements

[Ryan Beck · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really liked the book, but it isn't what I expected when I picked it up. The title seemed to imply a "Logic Made Easy" or a "Logic, for Dummies" style of the book. This book feels more like a history of the study of Logic. The chapters delve into the various eras of different discoveries of logic while providing concrete examples of what each era recommended. While my expectations are not founded in logical principles, just the basic marketing of expecting what's suggested. I would prefer a text that skips to the end, stating where logic is now, then provides tests and examples for the various principles and methods of logical reasoning, instead of focusing so much on the history of the development of our modern logical form.

These complaints are mostly because the book deviated from what was expected. I was still happy with what was there. I was very happy for the discussions on bi-conditional statements as well as on the development of logic that involves fractional truth values. Hearing that modern computer programming is based around logical concepts was eye-opening. I hope that multiple truth-value systems will be developed and implemented into computers soon.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up in Goodwill on a whim with not much idea of what this was about. Turned out to be quite different than I expected, but I enjoyed it. I have taken classes on logic and discrete math before, so I already knew a bit about this topic. If this was your first introduction to logical reasoning and Boolean algebra, I think it would be confusing as it does not provide a lot of explanation.
However, what intrigued me was the historical perspective which showed the evolution of logical reasoning, the interdisciplinary perspective, and the plethora of real life examples and practice questions.
The author discusses throughout how logical errors are often made, how to avoid making them, and how to present yourself so that others are able to more easily understand you without making logical mistakes. This book also discusses how humans use heuristic reasoning to understand what people mean even when they phrase their arguments illogically. Unfortunately, this information is somewhat repetitive, and I wish the repetition was replaced with new information or edited out. Otherwise, this is a good book for someone who is interested in learning about logic.

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved reading this book. She does a great job of describing logical rules and providing the notation and exampls of those rules. The examples in some cases are interactive so you can try to answer yourself before reading on and finding out what’s the correct answer and why. She also provides quite a bit of historical context as to how the logic concepts she describes came about (all the references are also provided).

All in all, I would describe the book as a survey of how logic in our languge and math has evolved and where it is now. I like the order of concepts introduced, from simple to more complex (e.g. binary Boolean logic is introduced first then fuzzy logic). The couple last chapters were in particular well done as emphasis is put on the strengths of our human nature and shortcomings of machine-like way of thinking.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall informative and entertaining book.

I agree with others that the title of the book is a little misleading. This is not an introduction to logic book. The author introduces logical concepts and explains them with examples, but there are no additional practice problems or other features one might expect from a textbook.

However, I gave this book 4-stars because where this book excels is in discussing (via research) just how easy it is to reach incorrect logical conclusions and why this happens. (The 'why' is especially important for those taking standardized test because it outlines the errors you are likely making.) It is an encouraging book because for anyone studying logic that also finds it hard to grasp, it turns out you are in the majority. The book ends on a positive note that it is possible to learn this way of thinking, though not without its challenges!

[Win Subam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful introductory reading for the people who want to explore the world of logic. With this book, I appreciate logic now even more. I now understand that being a logical individual at all times is a moonshot, but it is possible to reduce illogical reasoning by thinking in a right way and knowing some, if not all, the basics. Further, we are not thinking machine and with many blunders by the AI chatbots nowadays, I am sure that they would not surpass the human reasoning and thinking, but they could be used as an instrument or accomplice toward the better or worse future, warping human intelligence. Considering the context in every reasoning is one thing that humans possess that artificial intelligence could not get a hold of. But who knows? Only the future could tell.

[Tien Nguyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly, I was interested in how the author introduced the book and its content. I thought the book would give us more real-life examples, but it's too academic after all. The book is about explaining the meaning of words rather than guiding how to use them.

After some chapters, it likes wasting time reading more because it's all about the history and evolution of words, philosophy, and proposition.

One good point of this book is the diverse vocabulary with many synonyms and the pronunciation of some proper names.

For people who already know the basic knowledge of Math or Science, this book is not a good recommendation from me

[Jenny Trick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not at all what I thought it was going to be. I expected it to have lots of examples of logical mistakes in everyday life, and ways to avoid those mistakes. Instead, it was a recap of the history of logic, as well as very very basic introduction to symbolic logic. Most of the book was just recapping what discoveries and observations other people have made. I got bored around halfway through. Although one good thing about it is that it pointed me towards other peoples’ work that I’d like to read.

[El-Sir · Rating 3 out of 5]

The attempt to introduce the reader to a fundamental understanding of logic is perceptible in the book. The author however mergers several topics them discuss logic at the end of each chapter at a poorly manner. The author mergers topics such as history of logic, philosophers of logic, experiments done vis a vis logic. I reckon that the book is bombarded with an abundance of experiments that are used to make points but rather in an unsolicited manner. There could've been a better approach towards accentuating the study of logic by reviewing it.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started out interesting and seemed like something I was looking for in a book about logic but it kind of went off the rails and started to feel more like a textbook than a discussion. I could follow along but it seemed to be taking way too long and with far to many extraneous examples to get to the point. I got bored and abandoned it.

[Mary Han Thai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! Even though it gets harder to understand because of the concept, it still makes some clear points regarding logical thinking.
Lesson learnt: how to connect thoughts & words, how to make people understand your words, how to avoid falling in the trap of bias and misunderstanding by information given.

[Bry Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book and created an audio review: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ESM...

This serves as a god refresher on logic and provides a nice journey from the Sophists and Aristotle until now…or at least FROTRAN77. If you have not been exposed to formal logic, I would not recommend this to be your first book.

[Arianne X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wrong Title. Should be titled: "The History and Psychology of Logic"

This book is primarily about the history and psychology of logic with a few logic puzzles sprinkled in for good measure. This book has value in that regard but it is not an introduction to the actual use and application of logic.

[Jay Ahn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Logic made not so easy.

I took an elective in Formal Logic and I barely followed. The layman has no hope of learning from this. The research and studies Bennett includes are quite interesting though.

[Fernando Villalobos · Rating 3 out of 5]

It feels that the book gets lost on trying to show syllogism’s and history rather to give you practical tools, or to the point of the author book I made a wrong assumption. Not very recommended if you’re looking for practical advice. Also gets difficult to follow through.

[Kat Main · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basically all I took away from these pages is take each word at face value. Don’t read between the lines, and you’ve got the gist of it. I also now know about the history of logic and it’s origins that I most likely will never need to repeat.

[Wasif Zaman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meanders a lot between history, and there's little to no emphasis on application.

[Erin Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very engaging and entertaining medley of pop history, psychology, linguistics, and of course logic. I liked the tests throughout and feel I have a better understanding of logical principles