Socrates is mortal

As I said, I have two higher functioning oral English classes, and today I began to test how far I could take them in turns of what they would be able to talk about. I wanted to see if they would be able to think logically in a second language, which is no small task because most people can’t think logically in their first language. The idea was to introduce them to some basic logical reasoning patterns and to see if they comprehended them and could apply them. This required I perform one experiment I have not ever tried with a Chinese class, and truthfully I did not know how it would work. It was to see if the patten of deductive logic was as embedded in their minds as it is in the Western mind. That is, I can walk into any college classroom in America and put the following sentences on the board: "All men are mortal," "Socrates is a man," and then ask students what follows and every one of them will say "Socrates is mortal." Logic is hardwired into the brain as it were. But would it work with the Eastern mind? I was curious to find out and today, much to my relief, the students, when given the same two sentences, shot back with the same answer: Socrates is indeed mortal. I then introduced them to two basic logical patterns: "All A are B, x is an A, therefore x is a B" and "If A then B, A, therefore B" and had them come up with examples to mimic these patterns, and this they did quite well, to the point where they were able to apply them in a sophisticated way to some interesting problems including ethics, aesthetics and politics. I then told them do (since many of them had asked earlier) this is what philosophers , apply these basic reasoning patterns to all aspects of life: ethics, politics, love, friendship, art, happiness, knowledge, reality, etc. that I would be asking them to engage in a little philosophy as the term progressed. We will see how it goes.