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Elementary Symbolic Logic Syllabus

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40 views

Elementary Symbolic Logic Syllabus

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Uploaded by

Wadii1961
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Philosophy P150, Section 0490 Summer I 2004

ELEMENTARY LOGIC (3 CR)


M–F 8:55 – 10:10 a.m. in Sycamore Hall 003

Instructor: Georg Theiner


Email: [email protected]
Office: Sycamore Hall 0025
Office Hours: TR 10:30 – 11:30 am or by appointment

COURSE DESCRIPTION
Every day, you face decisions about what you ought to believe. Should you accept a
newspaper editorial’s demand to ban smoking from all public places? Should you alter
your attitude towards abortion if a friend of you claims that it is inconsistent with other
beliefs you hold? Suppose you believe that no ghosts are vampires, and that some
philosophers are ghosts, should you also believe that at least some philosophers are not
vampires? When encountering such episodes of reasoning, you want to be able to
determine whether they justify taking a particular position on the issue or not. This is
exactly what you can expect to learn in this class: to identify, analyze, and evaluate
arguments, the basic units of reasoning.

To get a better handle on the logical structure of arguments, we will spend most of the
course familiarizing ourselves with a fragment of symbolic logic known as sentential
logic. We will learn how to translate statements and arguments from plain English into
our symbolism, and how to use formal methods (such as truth tables, natural deduction,
tableaux system) to establish the validity of the argument in question. In the remainder of
the course we will mostly investigate arguments whose structure requires us to augment
our fragment by introducing a system of predicate logic. Furthermore, we will briefly
discuss how to evaluate the strength of inductive arguments.

REQUIRED TEXTBOOK
Bergmann, Moor, and Nelson, The Logic Book, 4th edition, Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003.
SCHEDULE
Week Dates Topics Exams
Fundamentals of Logic I
1 May 11 – 16
Statements and Arguments
Fundamentals of Logic II
2 May 17 – 23 Symbolization Exam #1: May 21
Reasoning with Truth Tables

Formal Proofs I
3 May 24 – 30 Sentential Natural Deduction
(Primitive rules)

Formal Proofs II
4 May 31 – June 6 Sentential Natural Deduction Exam #2: June 4
(Primitive and derived rules)

Predicate Logic I
Symbolization
5 June 6 – 13
Reasoning with Venn Diagrams
Categorical Syllogisms
Formal Proofs III
6 June 14 – 17 Exam #3: June 17
Reasoning with Tableaux

This course schedule is tentative; deviations may be necessary.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS
A. Homework assignments (25%)
B. In-class mini-quizzes, worksheets (10%)
C. Three in-class exams (first and second: 20% each, third: 25%)
D. Classroom participation will be taken into account to determine borderline cases; it
can only help your grade.

IMPORTANT NOTES
 This course has no prerequisites (besides the ability to read and write ). Nor will I
assume that you have any background in logic whatsoever.
 Since the best way to succeed in the study of logic is by doing logic, this course will
heavily emphasize problem-oriented practice instead of memorization. In order to
develop some of the fundamental techniques of logical reasoning, I will assign
homework on a regular basis. On most days, we will have a short mini-quiz in the
beginning of class. From time to time, there will also be worksheets and small
exercises which I will ask you to do in class. Please remember that any work you
submit in this class must be your own, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
 In order to demonstrate my emphasis on practice, I offer the following deal: if you
manage to get ≥ 90% of the total possible points on homework, quizzes, worksheets
(i.e. on items A and B), you will receive an automatic high score on exam #3, so you
won’t have to take it.
 I will post scores and grades on Oncourse (http://oncourse.iu.edu).
 Ordinarily, late homeworks will not be accepted, and make-up quizzes and exams
will only be administered in the case of special documented situations serious enough
to prevent a student from completing the work on time (e.g. medical or family
emergency).
 Ordinarily, Incompletes will only be assigned in the case of special documented
situations serious enough to prevent a student from completing the course work.
 Suspected cases of academic misconduct (e.g. cheating, plagiarism, unauthorized
collaboration) will be treated in accordance with university guidelines as specified in
the Code of Student Ethics.

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