Volume 52, 2008
Teaching Philosophy
Nelson Pole
Pages 69-80
What’s Right about Validity?
During the last third of the 20C, public discourse in the United States has become increasingly acerbic. Parallel to this development there has been an increasing enrollment in College level logic courses, courses that focus on arguments and their appraisal. Could there be a connection? A number of major
philosophers do not just see arguments as either 100% correct or 100% incorrect. Notable in this regard are Plato, Aquinas and Hume. Their approach to “logic” and that of others is offered as a palliative to the types of logic that we now teach.