I always felt something strange when I saw how “logic” was treated (in school, in logic 101 type of guide, etc).
Recently, by reading what Faust is doing, and then talking with him in another thread, I started to think about the reason why “academic logic”, including formal logic and others, usually avoid to tackle the premises.
I had the vague feeling that it’s a fault of Aristotle and (mainly) monotheist scholars who followed him.
So, I checked some webs and I do think it’s him who set the tone (the wrong tone, at least to my taste).
Socrates is supposed to be the guy who started “Philosophy” by trying to be more strict in some way and then coming into conclusion that he doesn’t know anything (or he had no certainty).
Then, Plato set it back, pretending to know this and that. And Aristotle twisted it even more.
The “logic” of Aristotle starts on the premise/ground that we have the 100% certainty of the proposition, which is far away from the realization of Socrates. And by starting from the presumption of certainty, Aristotle set the tradition of academic logic, which is more concerned about argument than statements, so to say.
Strangely, it seems that both Arabic scholars who studied Aristotle logic and then Christian (or Jewish) scholars who learned it from Arabs found no problem in it, just kept learning and conserving/teaching it, making it a tradition.
I’m guessing that Aristotle’s logic was very convenient for these often religious scholars because it allowed them to start off with the silly but well believed religious dogma as truth and then build system by combining them, or evaluate something using a theory based on them.
In other words, Aristotle’s logic was useful for someone who wanted to presume something as truth. Then, they could enlarge and expand the territory of (presumed) truth using valid argument.
And this could be important for religious people because they wouldn’t/couldn’t cast any doubt on religiously important matter.
I think the presumption of certainty (either positive or negative) used by traditional logic is somewhat similar to how small kids think in absolutes before learning that things aren’t so certain.
Personally, I see of logic as something nearly synonym of reasoning, rationality, or the evaluation of different focuses and there relation (from various perspectives). And this includes how we identify what we evaluate (focus), and relations of different focuses (this may make up basic propositions and then the argument part academic logic love to handle).
I think my view is probably closer to what people vaguely imagine in our daily thought/conversation as logic. And I can understand that someone who live by the academic definition can be frustrated with the usage of the word “logic” by general public. But I’d think it’s them who’s mind is trained to see logic in the limited way.