Chapter 8 - Logic and its objects: a medieval Aristotelian view

Summary

According to one familiar account logic tells us when arguments are valid; logic is thus about arguments. In his early question-commentary on the Prior Analytics, Robert Kilwardby takes the view that logic is one of the language-related sciences along with grammar and rhetoric. Graham Pries distinguishes logic as something that is taught, logic as something that is used, and logic as the correct norms of reasoning. The reason why Kilwardby and other idealist medieval logicians conceived of the objects of logic as human things is to be found in the aims which they thought logic should have. In treating logic as an art, they were committed to thinking that it should teach us how to construct good definitions, divisions and arguments. So the objects of logic had to include human activities of defining, dividing and arguing.