With All Your Mind: A Course on Logic and Argument for the Christian Classroom

Description

"With All Your Mind" is written for readers of all ages who are trying to improve their ability to identify, evaluate, and construct arguments within the context of a Christian worldview. It is written in a clear, inviting, conversational style in hopes of minimizing the somewhat daunting subject matter. It is suited for classroom instruction in private schools, homeschools, and colleges, as well as self-directed study. The book is the fruit of over two decades of instruction in classical Christian schools. My time in the classroom forced me to think hard about the needs of students, to select the principles most useful for them and the explanations that made most sense to them. To help students escape the emotional, subjective, and relativistic reasoning of contemporary culture, the book's opening chapters explore the difference between truth, belief, and feelings. Unit I then examines the nature and value of argument, along with a survey of informal fallacies. The subsequent division of the book approaches arguments in terms of three questions-(1) The Semantic Question: What do the terms mean? (2) The Inferential Question: Does the conclusion follow? (3) The Evidential Question: Are the premises true? Unit II, on the Semantic Question, starts with a discussion of Orwell's 1984 on the power of words. It provides in-depth discussions on the nature of meaning and definition. Unit III, on the Inferential Question, focuses first on necessary inference (or deduction), addressing both categorical logic and propositional logic. It then examines probable inference (or induction), including the uniformity of Nature, generalizations, analogical arguments, and cause-effect reasoning. An accompanying workbook will be released shortly. (I also plan on completing a more advanced volume on the Evidential Question in the future, which will serve as a resource for apologetics.)