Thank you very much - and to 'foldr and 'TeMPOraL as well. Yes, I was referring to the logic/reasoning education/experience that one tends to gain in "STEM" - a

Thank you very much - and to 'foldr and 'TeMPOraL as well. Yes, I was referring to the logic/reasoning education/experience that one tends to gain in "STEM" - as an example of study outside of the humanities, which I had mentioned in point 3. Not direct/explicit study. >Your point (4) appears to implicitly making the claim that learning formal logic (or rather, "informal formal logic") doesn't help much with informal logic. No. My point is that formal logic isn't sufficient, not that it isn't valuable or necessary. It is indeed very valuable and necessary. >Doing any sort of serious math, you will learn how an argument really works, how to take it apart. Your "really" there is presuming the thing in dispute, which is what is a "real" or paradigm case of argument/logic. Is it artificial formal language/symbols, or how people actually talk? In the vast majority of circumstances in which we are called upon to reason, the materials we must work with are natural language arguments. At the very least, study in informal logic is useful for understanding what's different about natural language argument; what can go wrong when converting it into formal expression; etc. As you noted, a good mathematician makes even natural language arguments precise "when possible". That requires knowing when is it "possible"; what can and can't be expressed in formal terms; whether some concepts (like democracy, art, etc.) are essentially contestable, which I presume presents difficulties for formalized expression; when is inconsistent nomenclature worth stopping and resetting over; how does one do interpretation; what can go wrong with interpretation; etc. And here's an important one: When are we better off without precision? (For example, would we be better off as a society if the meaning of "cruel and unusual punishment" could be expressed w/ mathematical precision? Some norms are valuable because they facilitate debate rather than settle debate.) If a good mathematician has a sense for all of these things, that sense is no doubt strongly aided by foundation in formal logic. It would also be aided in different ways by foundation in informal logic, but my sense is informal logic is relatively neglected.