Logic

Logic is a formal communications tool that defines the rules of correct reasoning.  Logical reasoning is about arriving at a conclusion in a rigorous way.  Inference is the steps in logical reasoning.  There two broad categories of logical reasoning: deductive and non-deductive.

Deductive reasoning provides a result that is guaranteed to be certain, therefore the result can be relied upon without doubt and humans need not be involved in a process because of the certainty of deductive reasoning. However, humans are necessary to make sure that the logic represented in the rules is correct.

Non-deductive reasoning, on the other hand, is not certain, meaning it could be correct but it could also be incorrect.  Non-deductive reasoning is based on probability.  And so non-deductive reasoning approaches must have a human in the loop to deal with that uncertainty.  There are three types of non-deductive reasoning: inductive, abductive, and analogy.

The elements of logic are the fundamental building blocks of logical theories that describe the logical conceptualization of some natural or man-made logical system.  An area of knowledge can describe the important logic of that system using these building blocks.


There are many logics. The standard logic we use is DATALOG which is a safe subset of first order logic that is implementable within computer software which eliminates the possibility of catastrophic system failure.

Logic is "neutral" in terms of the content being described and assumptions being made by the logic.  It just is. Logic is very useful in formally describing things like structures. Humans innately understand logic and machines can be made to understand logic. Teaching a human how to program with tools like DATALOG is more challenging. However, clever techniques can be employed to hide complexity such as using high level models.

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