Knowledge representation in education: Diagramming Carroll's syllogisms

Abstract

It has been long claimed that diagrammatic descriptions, in general, have advantages over linguistic ones. In logic, several well-known diagrammatic systems were available as a heuristic tool, including Euler circles, Venn diagrams, and Lewis Carroll's squares, which have been widely used for syllogistic reasoning. Carroll's squares were intended as a method of teaching students the basic principles of elementary logic. This paper focuses on Lewis Carroll's method, and specifically on his book, The Game of Logic. The paper aims to develop an alternative tool for teaching syllogisms to students. It takes the approach of redesigning some examples from The Game of Logic using a newly developed diagrammatic language. The results point to a viable method with a possible broader use for illustrative and educational purposes in logic.