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THE DIRTY WORD

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2010

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Extract

For the first two years of my daughter's life, I was scheduled to teach an Introductory Logic course. While I had taught Critical Thinking courses in the past, having to steep myself in categorical and propositional logic left a lasting impression on my own thinking. More importantly, though, these courses influenced my speech-habits during the early years of my child's development. By no means do I intend to assert that my child somehow gained some cognitive benefit from my communication with her during these early stages of her life. Rather, it seems that she acquired the particular virtue of tolerating her father's habit of voicing strangely worded utterances. As she has passed the three and half year mark, her own communication skills and means of expression are well on their way towards developing into her own distinct styles. This I know because we talk a lot. Often times these dialogues are about day care, her friends, or princesses and lots of pink stuff. But sometimes a gem of an argument develops.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2011

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References

Notes

1 For an interesting discussion of this subject, see: Weinstock, Michael P., ‘Psychological Research and the Epistemological Approach to Argumentation’, Informal Logic, vol. 26, No. 1 (2006): pp. 103120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Plato, , Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), trans. Waterfield, Robin, 508a–cGoogle Scholar.