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To all,

Have any of this board ventured to take a course in logic in preparation for the LSAT, meaning from a philosophy department? If so, did the course enhance your performance on the logical reasoning section or any other portion of the exam?

Thanks!

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Thanks!

Literally, just spend that time studying for the LSAT. Nothing else can possibly help you more than dealing with the actual test and specific strategies for it.

Although the LSAT did not help me for the computer science course I took after it, I'm thinking that if you take formal logic before your LSAT course, you could look pretty baller. While all the pleebs are just making marks like '~yellow -->odd', you can be rocking shit like ∀X (X(0) ∧ ∀x (X(x) → X(suc(x))) → ∀x X(x)) to really fucking PROVE shit. If you make sure you get a hot teacher chick, your advanced second order weak inductive skills will shame her. And shame is the quickest way into any girl's pants.

as above poster said, wouldnt go out of my way to take a class. I was philosophy minor and took formal logic and logic of everyday reasoning. LOER was a good class, but i had already studied for the lsat so it was kind of like basic conditional logic reinforcement and was Easy A.

A logic class is one of those things that will help if you already did it, but isn't useful if you're now starting your prep. Your time is better spent actually practicing LSAT questions.

I'm an LSAT instructor, and the amount of logic I teach is very tiny: sufficient conditions, necessary assumptions, contrapositives, logical translations (from English to logic, e.g. if, only if, etc.) linking deductions, AND and OR and XOR (one or the other but not both), quantifiers (many, some, most, all, none)

(did I forget anything?)

That's really it. I can cover all of that in an hour. The theory isn't hard. It's learning to recognize it in the context of English. It takes practice. LSAT questions are the best way to get this practice.

Thanks for the response Graeme. I have decided that I am going to teach myself logic from a textbook, which has always has been a suitable approach for myself. I've been researching various texts on the subject matter, and it seems I've purchased the right one. At the end of each chapter, it has LSAT questions with the specific purpose of applying the chapter's skill set to them. This is after all the regular excises within the chapter.

Not only am I undertaking this task for the LSAT, but for law school in general and for the satisfaction of acquiring knowledge. I believe it will immensely enrich my preparation for the occasion. Thanks to all.

LSAT style logic is informal logic, not formal logic. The only aspects of formal logic (that I've seen anyways) can easily be learned from Powerscore (necc/sufficient, contra, DeMorgan's etc), the rest is nice to know but not very applicable.

Case in point - in philosophical logic, an argument (that is, a finite sequence of well-formed formulae, (B1 ... Bn) where Bn is the conclusion requiring only assumptions from the formal system and is justified only by the rules of the system) is most accurately undermined by calling into question any of these wffs (save for Bn).
However, if the LSAT were to structure arguments like this it would be way too easy (imagine an LR Flaw question where premisses, as opposed to conclusions, are what are undermined - no one would miss the question because it would be so obvious). To mask this, LSAT solicits working with either 'gaps' between premisses or undermining the conclusion itself.

TLDR: Formal logic is nice for masturbation (defining an argument just now gave me a mini-boner), but if you want to succeed on the LSAT, just focus on informal logic, fallacies etc. Most of these things can be learned either on your own, or in a Critical Thinking/Philosophy Intro to Logic class, HTH.

monadologist wrote:LSAT style logic is informal logic, not formal logic. The only aspects of formal logic (that I've seen anyways) can easily be learned from Powerscore (necc/sufficient, contra, DeMorgan's etc), the rest is nice to know but not very applicable.

I forgot about DeMorgan's. I first came across that after four years as an LSAT teacher. It was in a computer science book. I tried and tried and couldn't understand it for the longest while.

I eventually found an LSAT video that talked about it in an LSAT context, and everything clicked.

Which is to say that, the logic you learn in a logic class may be phrased differently than what you'd find in an LSAT text, and be made much more complex than it actually is.

The LSAT is practitioner's logic. LSAT texts have framed the logic exactly as it can be applied to the LSAT, and they have notation very suitable to the LSAT (-->, slash through a letter for not, the various LG diagrams).

As everyone else said, formal logic is helpful but not necessary. When I was a freshman I took an intro to philosophy and critical thinking (also a Phil. class) and it's definitely made learning LR a lot easier. But it's probably not anything that I couldn't have picked up in a few days anyway. If you can understand to the core why A-->B can not mean B-->A or not A-->not B, then you're golden.

Personally, the formal logic section on one of the bibles (LG or LR, can't remember) was sufficiently helpful.

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