PHIL 125 - Logic

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2018/19a: An examination of the basic elements of modern logic. Topics include logical paraphrase, truth-functional logic, and quantification theory. Special attention is paid to the adequacy of the methods of logical analysis and assessment studied in the course. Doug Winblad.

Topic for 2018/19a: Introduction to Formal Logic. When is it rational to infer one claim from others? The disciple of logic aims to answer this question as well as others concerning the rich patterns of inference and reasoning that emerge upon further study. Formal Logic approaches these questions using some mathematical techniques that we begin to master in this course. In particular, we study a powerful artificial language called First-Order Logic (FOL) that allows us to formulate precisely the concepts of proof, truth and valid inference. Jamie Kelly.

Topic for 2018/2019b: Logic is the study of valid deductive arguments. Our central question in this course is: what makes an argument good or bad, in the strictest possible sense that an argument can be good or bad? In answering this question, this course teaches a skill: how to construct logically good arguments, and how to show whether an argument is logically good or not. This skill is not only central to logic itself and philosophy, but is widely relevant — to the law, to programming, to scientific research, to math, to linguistics, and to persuasive writing and speaking generally. You learn: how to represent the logical structure of natural language arguments (arguments written in English, for example) in a formal language (written in logical notation); what the basic logical operators are — such as negation, conjunction, etc. — and how to work with them when you construct and evaluate arguments; how to recognize and apply logical notions like consistency and validity; and how to demonstrate the logical validity or invalidity of arguments written in the formal language. Work consists of problem sets and in-class exams. Matthew Moss.

Two 75-minute periods.