Introduction to Formal Logic

I invite you to visit me during my office hours and to talk with me via telephone and e-mail. I always welcome your comments and questions, and I’m exceptionally happy to talk with you about the course material or about other philosophical or administrative matters.

Department office: ST 522

Department phone: 818.677.2757

Aims of the Course: This course is designed to be an intermediate-level introduction to deductive logic. The course is divided into four sections. The first two sections deal with statement logic (SL). In the first section of the course, we will become familiar with the language of SL, developing along the way methods we can use in testing for certain semantic properties of individual statements and for certain semantic relationships between statements. In the second section of the course, we’ll develop strategies for constructing proofs in SL. The next two sections of the course deal with predicate logic (L). Here again, we’ll first become familiar with the language of L, developing along the way methods we can use in determining whether L-statements have certain semantic properties and whether some L-statements are in various ways semantically related to others. In the fourth and final section of the course, we’ll develop strategies for constructing proofs in L.

This course satisfies the “Critical Thinking” component of the “Basic Skills” section of the General Education Program, which recognizes critical reasoning as a fundamental competence. Courses in this part of General Education take reasoning itself as their focus. Their goals are to provide students with criteria and methods for distinguishing good reasoning from bad and to help students develop basic reasoning skills that they can apply both within a broad range of academic disciplines and outside the academic environment. Students are expected to acquire skill in recognizing the logical structure of statements and arguments, the ability to distinguish rational from non-rational means of persuasion, skill in applying the principles of sound reasoning in the construction and evaluation of arguments, and an appreciation of the value of critical reasoning skills in the pursuit of knowledge.

A student cannot complete a GE requirement or a major requirement using the CR/NC basis of grading.

Required Text: Bessie, Joseph and Stuart Glennan, eds. Elements of Deductive Inference: An Introduction to Symbolic Logic (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2000).

Attendance and Homework: Since you are responsible for any and all material presented in class, regular attendance is essential to doing well in this course. Furthermore, logic is akin to mathematics, for example, in the following respect: becoming proficient in logic requires the development of a certain set of skills. And you can’t develop those skills without practice. This means, among other things, that you should diligently work on logic both in class and outside of class. Both class attendance and completing the homework assignments are therefore essential to doing well in this course.

For Fall 2008, the last day to change your academic program without a formal request is Friday, September 12, 2008.

Students with Disabilities: If you have a disability, please identify yourself to me and to the University so that we can reasonably accommodate your learning and the preparation and evaluation of the work that you must do for this course. Please contact the Center on Disabilities, Student Services Building, Room 110, 818.677.2684 (fax: 818.677.4932; email: sdr@csun.edu). For more information, visit the COD’s website at the following address: http://www.csun.edu/cod.

Evaluation: Your final grade in the course will be based on the following:

Exam 1	September 25	20%
Exam 2	October 21	21%
Exam 3	November 6	22%
Exam 4	December 9	23%
Other	7 (out of nine) quizzes	14%

Grades: I will use the plus/minus grading system. Letter grades are assigned according to the following system:

100-92% = A	86-83% = B	76-73% = C	66-63% = D
91-90% = A-	82-80% = B-	72-70% = C-	62-60% = D-
89-87% = B+	79-77% = C+	69-67% = D+	59-0% = F

I encourage verbal participation in lectures, in office hours, or by phone, as well as participation via e-mail. Such participation can benefit you in a number of ways: it will help you to gain a deeper understanding of the material and will thus help you to perform better on exams and quizzes. Furthermore, if your final grade falls just short of some higher grade, the quality of your verbal participation will be considered as grounds for improving your final grade.

Cheating and Plagiarism: I consider academic dishonesty a very serious issue. If you are unclear about what constitutes academic dishonesty or about the possible repercussions of and penalties for acts of academic dishonesty, please consult the California State University, Northridge Student Conduct Code (see http://www.csun.edu/a&r/soc/studentconduct.html). Moreover, I subscribe to and will enforce CSUN’s Policies on Nondiscrimination and Student Conduct as they are stated in Appendices D and E of the California State University, Northridge University Catalog (see http://www.csun.edu/catalog/appendices.html).

Exams: The exams are designed, of course, to determine whether you understand the material covered in class and in the homework assignments. There will be four exams, one after each of the four main sections of the course. You may take a make-up exam only if either (a) you have received, prior to the scheduled date of the exam, my permission to do so, or (b) you miss the exam due to a documented medical or family emergency.

Quizzes: Nine quizzes will be administered over the course of the semester. Your scores on seven of those nine quizzes will count toward your final grade for the course. The quizzes will cover recent material, and will feature problems similar to those in recent homework assignments. No make-up quizzes will be administered.

Extra Credit: I will assign no extra-credit work. There is nothing that you, individually or collectively, can do for extra credit. This means that you should concentrate on the credit assignments; you should make every effort to do as well as you can on the exams and on the quizzes.

Schedule
Topic	Date	Readings	In-Class Evaluation	Homework
Course Introduction	August 26	Logic and Argument
Introduction to Logic	August 28	Deduction and Induction, and Statements Elements of Deductive Inference (EoDI) §§1.1-1.3, pp. 1-24		Exercises for §1.1 (pp. 8-12), all Exercises for §1.2 (pp.18-19), all Exercises for §1.3 (pp. 22-23), all problems in Part I
The Language of Statement Logic	September 2	Simple and Compound Statements EoDI §§2.1-2.2, pp. 28-35	Quiz 1	Exercises for §2.1 (pp. 30-31), all problems in Part I Exercises for §2.2 (pp. 34-35), all
	September 4	Symbolizing Statements EoDI §2.3-2.5, pp. 36-70		Exercises for §2.3 (pp. 52-53), all Exercises for §2.4 (pp. 63-65), all Exercises for §2.5 (pp. 69-70), all problems in Parts I and II
	September 9	Truth Tables EoDI §§3.1-3.2, pp. 71-86		Exercises for §3.2 (p. 86), all problems in Part I
	September 11	Formalized Semantics for SL EoDI §3.3, pp. 86-92	Quiz 2	Exercises for §3.3 (p. 92), all
	September 16	Validity and Tautologousness, Consistency and Further Semantic Properties and Relationships EoDI §3.4-3.6, pp. 92-113		Exercises for §3.4 (pp. 98-101), all problems in Parts I, II and III Exercises for §3.5 (p. 108), all problems in Parts I and II Exercises for §3.6 (p. 112), all problems in Part I
	September 18	Brief Truth Tables EoDI §3.8, pp. 115-124	Quiz 3	Exercises for §3.8 (pp. 123-124), all problems in Parts I and II
	September 23	Review for Exam 1
	September 25	Exam 1	Exam 1
Proofs in Statement Logic	September 30	Whole-Line Inference Rules for D_SL EoDI §§4.1-4.2, pp. 155-166		Exercises for §4.2 (pp. 165-166), all
	October 7	Replacement Rules for D_SL EoDI §4.3, pp. 166-172	Quiz 4	Exercises for §4.3 (pp. 170-172), all
	October 9	Conditional Proof and Reductio ad Absurdum EoDI §§4.4-4.5, pp. 173-186		Exercises for §4.4 (pp. 183-184), all Exercises for §4.5 (p. 186), all
	October 14	§§4.4-4.5 continued	Quiz 5
	October 16	Review for Exam 2
	October 21	Exam 2	Exam 2
The Language of Predicate Logic	October 23	Introduction to Predicate Logic, Syntax for L, Interpretations, and Truth under an Interpretation EoDI §§5.1-5.5, pp. 200-239		Exercises for §5.3 (pp. 215-216), all Exercises for §5.4 (pp. 226-227), all problems except those in Part I Exercises for §5.5 (pp. 236-239), all
	October 28	Symbolization: Part I EoDI §5.6, pp. 239-253	Quiz 6	Exercises for §5.6 (pp. 250-253), all problems in Parts A, B and C (but omit # 48)
	October 30	Symbolization: Part II EoDI §5.7, pp. 253-259	Quiz 7	Exercises for §5.7 (pp. 256-259), all
	November 4	Review for Exam 3
	November 6	Exam 3	Exam 3
	November 11	Veterans’ Day
Proofs in Predicate Logic	November 13	The Rules UI, EG, and Q EoDI §§7.1-7.2, pp. 304-310		Exercises for §7.2 (pp. 309-310), all (but omit ## 4 and 10)
	November 18	§7.2 continued
	November 20	The Rules UG, R, PA-EI, and EI EoDI §7.3, pp. 310-323	Quiz 8	Exercises for §7.3 (pp. 321-322), all problems in Parts I and II
	November 25	§7.3 continued
	November 27	Thanksgiving Recess
	December 2	§7.3 continued	Quiz 9
	December 4	Review for Exam 4
	December 9	Exam 4	Exam 4

Note: Everything in this syllabus, including the reading assignments, homework assignments, exam and quiz dates, is subject to revision. I will announce any and all revisions in class and, in general, do my best to make sure that everyone knows about revisions. If you miss class, you must nevertheless submit assignments according to any revisions that I make to the Schedule. You should either make sure that you don’t miss class or find a sure way of becoming aware of any revisions that I make to the Schedule or to the syllabus.

Return to Tim Black’s Homepage * Return to Tim’s Philosophy Page