Theory in Ethno‐Logic *

Because thought processes underlie all human action and can distinguish one culture from another, the social sciences must face the problem of determining how people think. Reasoning can be viewed as abstract and not connected to any particular human activity, as it is in philosophical logic, or it can be seen as a process in a particular linguistic, social and cultural setting, as it is in ethno‐logic. Recently anthropologists, developmental psychologists and other scholars working under the general rubric of cognitive science have studied issues in ethno‐logic but these studies are flawed because the researchers accepted philosophical logic as the norm under which they judged the actions of their subjects. Good theory in ethno‐logic can only come from study which describes thought processes from the natives point of view. One such theory states that conclusions are logically established on the semantic structure of the argument. This theory accounts for both universal and culture specific aspects of reasoning, is testable, opens new areas of research and provides researchers with a firmly grounded method for using meaning to account for behavior.