PHIL 155.001 – Introduction to Mathematical Logic

Instructor: Chris Dorst. This course meets MWF 9:05 – 9:55 a.m. in CW 105.

Philosophy 155 is an introduction to symbolic logic.  Logic is centrally concerned with arguments, good and bad.  If an argument is a good one, its conclusion will logically follow from its premises – and we say that the argument is valid.  It is not always easy to tell whether an argument is valid or not.  Thus, we will develop formal techniques that will help us to determine the validity of arguments in a rigorous way.  This will require the introduction of special formal languages, and we’ll learn how to translate between English and these formal languages.  We will study two systems of logic: we will begin with sentential logic, and then move on to a richer system of logic, quantificational logic.