Iconic Logic: The Visual Art of Drawing the Right Conclusion

Abstract

Most people, evidence suggests, have a hard time thinking straight. Symbolic logic is a tool that can help remedy this problem. Unfortunately, it is highly abstract and uses symbols whose meanings depend on unintuitive arbitrary conventions. Without sacrificing rigor, iconic logic is more concrete and uses icons that resemble what they stand for and whose meanings are thus easier to picture, process, and remember. Here I review and critique iconic existential graphs and concept diagrams—the former link iconic logic to iconic mathematics; the latter expand popular Euler or Venn diagrams, and to some degree, their user-friendliness has been empirically investigated. I lay out how expertise in perception, cognition, and genetics can inform and improve this empirical research to help render iconic logic more ergonomic. After all, logic is a tool, and tools should not only suit their use but also their user.