Logic is among the oldest and most foundational of the university disciplines. The goal is to equip students with most general possible framework for sound and rigorous reasoning — one that works regardless of topic area (e.g. politics, or chemistry, or English literature, or …), and regardless of the specific quirks of your natural language or programming language or mathematical system.
One 80 minute lecture, and one 80 minute “workshop” (i.e. precept) each week
Problem sets approximately every week (50% of grade)
In class midterm exam (15% of grade)
In class final exam (30% of grade)
Engagement and participation (5% of grade)
The textbook How Logic Works can be bought at discount from Labyrinth. It’s also available from Amazon and the like.
Exercises: logic-works-more.html
We will post additional notes and problem sets here and/or on Canvas.
Ever since modern symbolic logic was consolidated (in the mid 1900s), the standard format for an introductory logic class has been to learn the classical predicate calculus in three steps: propositional logic, monadic predicate logic, polyadic predicate logic. We follow this same outline, but with three twists.
We emphasize reasoning techniques (natural deduction) over calculational techniques (truth tables or trees).
We incorporate more analysis of arguments in natural language (e.g. argument mapping).
We illustrate the logical concepts, when helpful, by displaying them concretely in the general framework of functional programming languages. However, this course presupposes no background in programming, nor does it presuppose that students are interested in programming.