Reflections on informal logic in China

Logic holds an important position in education in China, from primary to higher. The development and spread of logic as a discipline in China has a history of more than a century, beginning during the Republic of China when many young people went abroad to study, some of whom engaged in logic. After their return, they taught logic courses in senior high schools, normal schools, and universities in China.¹ In the development of logic in China, several branches of informal logic have played indispensable parts, and their roles in turn have demonstrated the irreplaceable position, and infused Chinese characteristics into the field of informal logic.

Informal logic emerged in North America in the 1970s, and has aimed to improve the comparatively insubstantial curriculum of formal logic in general education in colleges and universities. Formal logic, with its effective use and popularization in mathematics and the sciences, has long occupied a mainstream position in logic research. However, it has some inherent defects, notably its inadequacy for handling real-life argumentation. This is not so much a flaw as an idea inherent in formal logic, but students in the social sciences, who are more concerned with the expression of natural language and argumentation in real life, are nonetheless more in need of logical approaches to the solution of practical argumentative problems. The term ‘informal logic’ first appeared in mainland China in 1984, when John Nolt, a logician from the University of Tennessee, gave a lecture at a university in Nanjing, introducing the development of informal logic in the United States and Canada. Four years later, the term came into use in China, but initially informal logic was regarded as a reference to a reformed version of traditional logic rather than a new logical discipline (Wu & Liu, 2007).

As the founders of informal logic, Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair at the University of Windsor in Canada hold that informal logic designates that branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria and procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, critique and construction of argumentation in everyday discourse (Blair & Johnson, 1987). Following this definition, several research threads characterized by an interest in ‘informal logic’ have run through the teaching of and research on logic in China.

Logic in ancient China

Although the concept of informal logic was formulated in the 1970s, logic in ancient China had shown certain typical characteristics of informal logic from its very beginning. Studying ancient Chinese logic requires adequate training in traditional Chinese philosophy, which implies a strong ability to read texts in classical Chinese and a sufficient knowledge of ancient Chinese history, as well as a good command of modern logic. On the other hand, due to the particularity of the classical Chinese language, Mohist logic and other approaches to logic in ancient China adopted different methods and paths from Aristotelian logic, resulting in a distinctive situation. As Shen Youding once pointed out, ‘As in ancient Greece and India, logic in ancient China was first developed as debate skills’ (Shen, 1992, p. 311). Therefore, ancient Chinese logic had just such ‘informal’ characteristics.

Scholars divide the study of ancient Chinese logic into a pioneering period constituting the first forty years of the 20th century, a period of deepening understanding from the 1950s to the 1970s, a synoptic period from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, and a period of revision from the 1990s to the 21st century. The research methods utilized during these four periods alternated between Chinese and Western comparison and historical analysis, and constantly tweaked their focus. ‘the results of the study will then present themselves on three levels– the level of explicit logical principles, the level of implicit patterns of reasoning, and the level of the logico-semantic relationships between logic and patterns of reasoning, on the one hand, ·and the moral, social, and metaphysical concerns of philosophy, on the other’ (Cheng, 1965, p. 215).

In the pioneering period, scholars compared ancient Chinese logic, especially Mohist logic, with Western Aristotelian logic, and won a place for ancient Chinese logic in the field of logic by highlighting commonalities. In the second period, Chinese scholars began to situate ancient logic within the unique historical and cultural atmosphere of ancient China, trying to better understand the nature and development of ancient Chinese logic. However, scholarship during this period also studied many things that do not properly belong to the domain of logic, thereby expanding the scope of research on ancient Chinese logic. By the synoptic period of the 1970s and 1980s, scholars had resumed employing Western logical theory as a tool for studying ancient Chinese logic. They carried on and summarizes the results of prior comparative and historical studies, and focused on the study of formal logic in ancient China. Accordingly, the scope of their research was narrowed to the ancient Chinese theory of names and argumentation. With the rise of informal logic in the 1990s and reflection on the work of the previous three periods, scholars came to realize that many of the contents of logical thought in ancient China cannot be satisfactorily explained using traditional Western formal logic. One cannot make a more comprehensive and accurate explanation of the former unless he emancipates his mind, breaks free from the constraints of formal logic, and makes use of the various tools of informal logic (Tian, 2002; Yang, 2011; Zhang, 2007).

Aristotle’s ideas on informal logic

When we talk about informal logic, Aristotle’s ideas concerning logic cannot be overlooked, as has been affirmed by many scholars in China and abroad. Indeed, Aristotle’s thought on logic pays attention to everyday argument in the same way that informal logic does. The fallacies, rhetoric and argumentative tactics in Aristotle’s writings on logic have become essential for the study of informal logic today.

But since Aristotle’s thought on logic was introduced into China at the acme of formal logic, most scholars focus more on its discussions of formal logic. Because of the natural transition from the way of thinking in formal logic to that in Gottlob Frege’s modern logic, faculties in colleges and universities offer them as two interconnected courses to junior and senior undergraduates and to postgraduates in philosophy, respectively. But ‘Topics’ and ‘Sophistical Refutations’ in the Organon, along with the quite differently structured contents of the Rhetoric, have been neglected even though they play an important role in Aristotle’s thought on logic. Few Chinese scholars to date have explored these texts.

Even though Chinese scholars accepted in general that Aristotle’s ideas about informal logic offered a basis for the study of modern informal logic, they did not show great enthusiasm for research in this field even after the discourse on informal logic emerged in the late 1980s because of the interruption of the teaching of and research on logic in China.

Dialectical logic

The spread of dialectical logic at Chinese colleges and universities begin with the introduction of Marxist philosophy in the 1920s. In the eyes of Chinese scholars in the 1920s and 1930s, dialectical logic was directly derived from the dialectics of Marxist philosophy. Friedrich Engels was the first major philosopher to put forward the concept of ‘dialectical logic’. ‘Dialectical logic, in contrast to the old, merely formal logic, is not, like the latter, content with enumerating the forms of motion of thought, i.e. the various forms of judgment and conclusion, and placing them side by side without any connection. On the contrary, it derives these forms out of one another, it makes one subordinate to another instead of putting them on an equal level, it develops the higher forms out of the lower’ (Engels, 2010).

Affected by the philosophers and logicians of the former Soviet Union, some Chinese Marxist researchers in the 1920s and 1930s virtually equated dialectical logic with Marxist dialectics and formal logic originating from ancient Greece with metaphysics, eulogizing the former but condemning the latter. In the 1950s and 1960s, dialectical logic was mainly discussed by professionals from Chinese logic circles, with the debates more normalized and academic. The discussion was focused on such questions as the objects of dialectical logic and the relationship between dialectical logic and formal logic.

The period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s was the heyday of dialectical logic research and teaching in China. Correspondingly many scholars in dialectical logic became famous and a considerable number of postgraduates were trained; courses on dialectical logic were opened in many departments of philosophy in China, and specialized textbooks became available. At least 25 monographs and textbooks of dialectical logic were published during this period. In 1980, the Dialectical Logic Research Association of the Chinese Society of Logic was founded. By the end of the 1980s, the Association had more than 400 members, and had held more than 10 national academic seminars. Logicians in this period engaged in comprehensive and detailed discussion of such key issues as the basic laws of dialectical logic, attempting to formalize them.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, dialectical logic in China has lost its glory of the 1980s and 1990s. The study of dialectical logic continues, but is mainly done by those professional researchers who were active in the 1980s and 1990s. With the rise of the concept of informal logic, they have also begun to consider the relationship between dialectical logic and informal logic, and tried to interpret dialectical logic from the perspective of latter. For more detail of the history of dialectical logic in China (see Chen & Wang, 2022b).

Dialectical logic has thus far failed to become the mainstream of logic in China. From another point of view, this failure is precisely a result of the blossoming of informal logic, as it coincided with informal logic’s introduction and spread in China. Therefore, we can also hold that Chinese scholars are no longer entangled in the relationship between dialectical logic and formal logic, or in the attempt at the formalization of dialectical logic. At the same time, they no longer try to prove that dialectical logic does not belong to dialectics; instead, they now regard dialectical logic as a component of informal logic, paying more attention to the contribution and significance of dialectical logic in argumentation, debate, methodology and so forth.

Critical thinking

The concept of critical thinking can be traced back to the American pragmatist John Dewey’s ‘reflective thinking’. Dewey as a pioneer in modern American educational philosophy proposed the articulation, promotion, and adoption of critical thinking as an educational goal. In How we think: A Restatement of the Relations of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process published in 1933, Dewey discussed the reflective thinking which may be regarded as the expression of his ideas of critical thinking: ‘Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends constitutes reflective thought’ (Dewey, 1986, p. 118). As one of the compulsory courses of general education, critical thinking as a course of methodological training has been made concrete in many disciplines before it was introduced into China. Psychology offers a test scale for critical thinking, history teaches textual hermeneutics, journalism provides courses in media analysis, and so on (Bomstad & Weddle, 1989).

Since the beginning of the 21st century, courses related to critical thinking have been offered in various departments in Chinese colleges and universities. Not all the earliest critical thinking course offerings were in philosophy departments, which is an important feature of the teaching of critical thinking in China. Researchers in various fields bring critical thinking directly into the teaching of their own subjects, contributing to the upsurge in its teaching and study. Exploratory studies on the application of critical thinking to education, psychology, law and writing, etc. have appeared in large numbers in academic journals.

As the youngest member of the informal logic ‘family’, critical thinking has dramatically developed during its short time in Chinese logic circles. In only two decades, more than 200 monographs and translated works on critical thinking (ranging from English teaching in junior high schools to the teaching of economic and management knowledge) have been published nationwide, and the relevant academic papers number nearly 15,000. Critical thinking has become the most popular course of informal logic in China.

But problems have inevitably followed. With each subject area functioning as a separate unit, many teachers of critical thinking are mere novices who have not received adequate training in the pedagogy of logic. They make haste to grab foreign textbooks, stumble along to the podium, and give lectures on the basis of their own understanding. This results in obviously inconsistent teaching quality. It was in this situation that Chinese logic scholars began to study and promote the teaching of critical thinking. Since 2011, the Annual Critical Thinking Conference has been held regularly to provide teachers, postgraduates and doctoral students of various units and subjects with opportunities for exchange in the teaching and study of critical thinking, so as to comprehensively improve the professional standards of critical thinking in all educational fields.

On October 29, 2017, the Center for Innovative Education and Critical Thinking was officially established at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The Center invites renowned scholars in the field of critical thinking at home and abroad to serve as its academic committee members. It has become a public platform for education and research on critical thinking in China, and one of the few non-entity research institutions in China with critical thinking as its main research focus. Critical thinking as a form of informal logic should receive more attention from multiple audiences as all aspects of Chinese society advance.

The above-mentioned four branches of informal logic, though not exhaustive, are the most important ones with respect to teaching and research in Chinese logic. They entered China in sequence, and although they have experienced ups and downs, they have never quit the stage of Chinese logic. With the advancement and promotion of the concept of informal logic, all the mentioned branches have played their parts in analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, criticizing and constructing this discourse. At the end of the essay ‘Informal Logic in China’, released in the third issue of Informal Logic (1984), Nolt wrote, ‘If the Chinese do enter the field of informal logic, they will undoubtedly bring with them new ideas which will enrich our discipline substantially’. Reading this sentence again nearly four decades later, we can indeed say that we undoubtedly have.

Lei Chen
School of Philosophy, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
[email protected]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For the role of logical thinking in middle school teaching (see Chen & Wang, 2022a).