PHILOSOPHY 131:LOGIC

Spring Semester 2013

Instructor: Patrick Roneyemail:

Office Hours: 1:00 – 2:00 Tuesday and Thursday

Office: Social Science 265Telephone: 1622

BRIEF COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course will provide an introduction to formal logic that is suitable for both philosophy and non-philosophy students. We will cover both basic sentential logic as well as some predicate logic. This will include translating ordinary language statements into symbolic form, constructing truth tables and learning the rules of deduction.

Course Goals:

If you successfully complete this course you will be able to reason better!

In concrete terms, that means you will be able to:

a) understand the difference between ordinary or "natural" language and logical language;

b) translate various kinds of ordinary language statements into formal logical statements;

c) know the rules of sentential logic and be able to prove the validity of theorems and arguments;

d) understand first order predicate logic and be able to prove the validity of theorems and arguments.

Text for the Course:

A reader that is available from the photocopy room will be provided.

REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING:

Requirements

  • Attendance is mandatory. I will take attendance at the beginning of class. Please do not be late. After a certain point I will close the door. If it is closed, please do not enter the class.
  • Course Materials must ALWAYS be brought to class. There are no exceptions to this. No text = no attendance.
  • Weekly problem sets will be given out on Thursday and will be due in class on the following Tuesdday.
  • There will be 2 midterms and a final exam. The final exam will be cumulative. The reason for this is pretty obvious. You can’t understand the later material in the course without knowing the earlier material.

Class Conduct

  • Absence: If you miss more than 4 classes your attendance grade will go down by 1 point per extra class missed up to a total of 10 points.
  • Repeated lateness. Please do not be late. I start lecturing at 11:00 and I expect you to be here. Repeated lateness will have a negative effect on your attendance and class participation grades.
  • Cell phones and computersmust be switched off and put away. You are not to make or receive any calls, text messages, or voice message while in class. Put your cell phone away. You are here to learn and study environmental ethics. Cell phones are very distracting and affect your ability to concentrate. Either put them away or do not enter the classroom.

Grading

Midterm 1:25 points

Midterm 2:25 points

Final Exam:25 points

Problem Sets 15 points

Class Performance and Participation: 5 points

Attendance: 5 points.

Letter grades

A / 90-100 / B- / 77-79 / D+ / 64-66
A- / 87-89 / C+ / 74-76 / D / 60-63
B+ / 84-86 / C / 70-73 / F / 59 and below
B / 80-83 / C- / 67-69

How to do well in this course:

Logic requires practice. All lot of practice.

Attend the lectures, read the corresponding chapters of the text before the lectureand do all homework. Use the homework and other non-assigned exercises in the text to determine for yourself how well you have mastered the material. If you need additional help, ask! The earlier you get clear on some issue that is giving you trouble, the better it will be for everybody.

For each exam, practice exams will be made available to you in advance.

This will be a very manageable class IF you simply keep up with the material, regularly practice by doing exercises, and ask for help as soon as you need it.

Many students end up getting grades much worse than they expect because they do not follow the above advice. The material looks easy when you read through it or watch someone else work a proof or truth table, and many students then think "That looks easy, I'll be able to do that on a test." But as some students learn the hard way, watching someone do it is a lot easier than doing it yourself. Furthermore, the exams are long. The only way to get to the point where you can do the problems quickly and accurately is to do a lot of practice.

A final note:

The study of logic will help you greatly if you take it seriously. Surprisingly enough, most of us do not think very clearly or logically. This leads to all sorts of errors in our reasoning, and what’s worse, we are usually not aware of it. If you keep up with this course and work at it, your reasoning abilities will take a quantum leap forward, and what you learn here will useful to you for the rest of your academic, professional and public life.