Philosophy 12A

This course is an introduction to truth-functional and quantificational logic. Logic is the study of good and bad arguments (pieces of reasoning). In a deductively good argument, the conclusion follows from the assumptions: if all assumptions are true, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true as well. The deductive goodness of an important class of arguments rests on patterns in the way these arguments use notions such as not, and, or, if, all and some. We will represent such patterns symbolically, and give a precise account of which patterns ensure deductive goodness and which do not. In addition, we will introduce systems of rules for constructing deductively good arguments. Besides becoming better at formulating and evaluating deductive arguments, students will gain an understanding of central logical concepts such as validity, implication, consistency, equivalence, soundness, and completeness.

Textbook: Virginia Klenk, Understanding Symbolic Logic, 4th edition (Prentice Hall, 2002).