The Power of Logic

Frances Howard-Snyder, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Ryan Wasserman

Philosophy

First published: 2009
Print length: 667 pagesMcGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009

Description

The Power of Logic is an introductory textbook on reasoning and the analysis of arguments. It explains how premises support conclusions and introduces standards such as validity and soundness for evaluating deductive reasoning. The book moves from arguments expressed in ordinary language to formal techniques used in symbolic logic, including truth tables and proof methods. It also gives readers a framework for recognizing common mistakes and testing whether a conclusion actually follows from its premises. Designed for students beginning the subject, the text connects abstract logical forms with the practical work of reconstructing and assessing arguments.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Academic · Dense · Direct · Technical

Pace

Slow

Tone

Cerebral · Detached · Earnest

Structure

Argumentative · Reference

Focus

Argument · Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

1 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 3 / 5

Themes

Knowledge and truth

About Frances Howard-Snyder

Frances Howard-Snyder is a philosophy professor and fiction writer whose work connects analytic inquiry with the practical construction of stories. Her scholarship ranges across normative ethics, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics, while her fiction places questions about trust, faith, love, sexual misconduct, and cultural appropriation within social and intimate conflicts. In her writing on craft, she treats causation as a principle shaping character, setting, dialogue, theme, and suspense as well as plot. The Power of Logic, coauthored with Daniel Howard-Snyder and Ryan Wasserman, applies a similarly lucid approach to instruction, moving through informal, symbolic, and inductive reasoning by way of direct explanations, examples, and exercises.

About Daniel Howard-Snyder

Daniel Howard-Snyder is a philosopher whose work applies careful analysis to religious belief, faith, doubt, and intellectual responsibility. He clarifies debates by distinguishing logical contradiction from evidential weight, belief from related attitudes, and isolated explanations from their combined effect. In discussions of divine hiddenness, God’s apparent absence figures both as personal distress and as a reason to question theism. Collaborative essays describe faith as reliance that persists under pressure and intellectual humility as recognizing and addressing one’s cognitive limits. His edited collections set opposing arguments and replies into conversation. Written with Frances Howard-Snyder and Ryan Wasserman, The Power of Logic brings similar habits of precision to beginners through clear explanations, worked examples, and exercises.

About Ryan Wasserman

Ryan Wasserman is a philosopher whose writing ranges from analytic metaphysics to logic, ethics, freedom, and philosophy of language. He builds inquiry around sharply bounded puzzles, from clay statues to self-visitation, causal loops, and grandfather cases, then uses each case to test competing accounts of identity, persistence, causation, and choice. In Paradoxes of Time Travel, these tests form a sustained investigation rather than a collection of curiosities. The book first defines its problem, then moves cumulatively through temporal, freedom, causal, and identity paradoxes to ask whether time travel is compatible with metaphysical laws. Its evidence reaches beyond standard thought experiments to early scholarship, physics, science fiction, and philosophical correspondence. The coauthored textbook The Power of Logic applies a similarly ordered method at an introductory level, moving from argument recognition and fallacies into categorical, statement, predicate, and inductive logic, with examples and exercises reinforcing each step. As co-editor of Metametaphysics, Wasserman also examines how ontological disputes are framed and whether semantics, epistemology, or disciplinary method can settle them.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Higher Education
Language: English
ISBN: 9780073407371

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