Force Logic: A New Symbolic Logic to Enhance CBT

"Standard treatments of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) rely primarily on truth-functional logic to help clients overcome their irrational thinking. Thus, the client learns to avoid overgeneralizations (“My partner is always complaining”) and false hypotheses (“My boss did not say hello to me today so he is intending to fire me”) by paying careful attention to the empirical evidence (“My partner complains more than I prefer but not always”); and alternative explanations (“Maybe my boss was preoccupied with something when he ignored me this morning”)."

"While the value of the latter is inestimable, this empirical approach does not address locutions that are not truth-functional, that is, neither true nor false. Consider “I must never fail,” “Others should always treat me fairly,” and “I am a bad person.” These locutions are often performed in the context of people's emotional reasoning, where they support emotions such as depression, anxiety, anger, and guilt. The meaning or purpose of such locutions is primarily a function of illocutionary force rather than propositional content."

"The illocutionary force of a locution is its potential to perform a certain type of speech act when spoken. For example, the locution “I must never fail” has the potential to make a demand on oneself when spoken to oneself. Hence, viewing the latter performance as a report of a subjective state (“I don't want to fail”) would confuse truth-functional logic with force logic. This is because this performance wou"

"I call this new logic illocutionary force logic, or force logic for brevity. A version of force logic, v. F2, is presented here. Force logic enhances CBT by addressing non-truth-functional emotional reasoning. Force logic clarifies non-empirical speech acts in anxiety and depression within CBT. Force logic integrates truth-functional and modal logic for nuanced emotional reasoning."

Standard CBT uses truth-functional logic to correct irrational beliefs by comparing propositions against empirical evidence and considering alternative explanations. Many emotionally driven statements, such as “I must never fail,” “Others should always treat me fairly,” and “I am a bad person,” are not truth-functional and do not fit a true-or-false evaluation. Their meaning and psychological role depend mainly on illocutionary force rather than propositional content. Illocutionary force logic treats the potential speech act performed by a locution as central, distinguishing demands, expectations, and self-evaluations from reports of subjective states. Integrating truth-functional and modal logic with force logic supports more nuanced emotional reasoning in anxiety and depression.

Read at Psychology Today