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PHILOSOPHY OF LOGIC PHIL323 First Semester, 2014 City Campus Contents 1. COURSE INFORMATION 2. GENERAL OVERVIEW 3. COURSEWORK AND ASSESSMENT 4. READINGS 5. LECTURE SCHEDULE WITH ASSOCIATED READINGS 6. TUTORIAL EXERCISES 7. ASSIGNMENTS 1. Assignment 1: First Problem Set 2. Assignment 2: Essay 3. Assignment 3: Second Problem Set 8. ADMINISTRIVIA CONCERNING ALL ASSIGNMENTS 1. COURSE INFORMATION Lecturer and course supervisor: Jonathan McKeown-Green Office: Room 201, Level 2, Arts 2, 18 Symonds Street, City Campus Office hour: Wednesday, 11am-1pm Email: [email protected] Telephone: 373 7599 extension 84631 Classes Lectures are on Wednesdays 3pm – 5pm, and Tutorials are on Thursdays 9-10am, 2. GENERAL OVERVIEW This course is an introduction to two closely related subjects: the philosophy of logic and logic’s relevance to ordinary reasoning. The philosophy of logic is a systematic inquiry into what it is for and what it is like. Taster questions include: Question 1 Must we believe, as classical logic preaches, that every statement whatsoever is entailed by a contradiction? Question 2 Are there any good arguments that bad arguments are bad? As noted, our second subject is the connection between ordinary, everyday reasoning, on the one hand, and logic, as it is practised by mathematicians, philosophers and computer scientists, on the other. Taster questions include: Question 3 Should logical principles be regarded as rules for good thinking? Question 4 Are logical principles best understood as truths about a reality that is independent of us or are they really only truths about how we do, or should, draw conclusions? The close relationship between our two subject areas becomes evident once we note that much philosophical speculation about what logic is and what it is like arises because we care about the relationship between logic and ordinary reasoning. Questions like (iii) and (iv) above arise from such speculation. All of questions 1-4 above are controversial and this is part of why they are interesting to pursue. Our pursuit of these issues presupposes some familiarity with classical propositional and predicate logic - exactly the sort of familiarity you get from completing some first and 1 second year logic courses. If you have done more logic than this, you may also find that experience useful. Even so, you will only occasionally be asked to write proofs or draw truth trees. Most of the issues we confront require careful thought about logic, not direct applications of logic. Some of the assigned readings are difficult to follow, but there should be sufficient guidance given in class to help you get the most out of them. Important! You will need a pretty good grasp of both spoken and written English to be able to follow many of the issues discussed. 3. COURSEWORK AND ASSESSMENT There is no final examination. There will be three assignments. One of them will be worth 40% of the final mark and each of the other two will be worth 30% of the final mark. The assignments will initially be marked out of 100. The assignment for which you get the highest percentage (whichever that one is) will be the one that contributes 40% to your final mark. All assignments will be submitted electronically to my email address: [email protected] Format should be .doc or .docx or rtf. Assignment 1 First Problem Set. Due Monday, 14 April (first day of mid-semester break), at 5 pm. (The questions and instructions are included in this file.) Assignment 2 1500 word essay Due Monday, 19 May (start of week 10), at 5 pm. (A selection of suggested topics is included in this file. If you want to write on something else, talk to me.) Assignment 3 2nd Problem Set. Due Monday, 9 June (the first Monday after classes end), at 5 pm. (Again, the questions and instructions are included in this file.) 2 READING FOR THE COURSE What to read, and when? The lecture schedule, which can be found later in these notes, lists the readings for each topic. There are some required readings for each topic, and sometimes further recommended readings for the keen at heart. The required readings are found either in the course book or in the recommended text: Stephen Read (1994): Thinking about logic: an introduction to the philosophy of logic, Oxford University Press, ISBN: 019289238X. The Stephen Read text is on short loan in the Information Commons. Each chapter contains a final section with a guide to even more reading. Readings in the online course booklet 1. Girle, Roderick (1976): Notes on the History of Logic, Notes for PD220: Applied and Modal Logic, Philosophy Dept, University of Queensland. 2. Johnson-Laird, Philip et al. (2000): “Illusions in reasoning about consistency”, Science, 288, pp. 531-2. 3. Harman, Gilbert (1984): “Logic and Reasoning”, Synthese, 60, pp. 107-127. 4. Knorpp, William Max (1997): “The Relevance of Logic to Reasoning and Belief Revision: Harman On ‘Change in View’”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 78, pp. 78-92. 5. Hunter, Geoffrey (1971): “Introduction: General Notions”, Metalogic: An Introduction to the Metatheory of Standard First Order Logic, Macmillan, London, pp. 3-21. 6. Carroll, Lewis (1972): “What Achilles Said to the Tortoise”, Readings on Logic, Copi and Gould (ed.), Macmillan, New York, pp. 117-119. 7. Massey, Gerald (1975): “Are There Any Good Arguments that Bad Arguments are Bad?” Philosophy in Context, 4, pp. 61-77. 8. Kripke, Saul (1980): Naming and Necessity, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 15-20. 9. Lewis, David (1985): “Counterparts or Double Lives?” (Chapter 4), On the Plurality of Worlds, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 192-198. 10. Stalnaker, Robert (1976): “Propositions”, in The Philosophy of Language, Martinich, A. P. (ed), Oxford, 1990, pp.79-91. 11. Cartwright, Richard (1962): “Propositions”, in Philosophical Essays, Cartwright (ed), MIT, 1987, pp. 33-53. 3 12. Haack, Susan (1978): “Sentence Connectives” (Chapter 3), Philosophy of Logics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 28-38. 13. Quine, W. V. (1982): “Truth Functions” (Chapter 2), Methods of Logic, fourth edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 7-13. 14. Grice, Paul (1975): “The Logic of Conversation” in The Logic of Grammar, Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds), Dickenson, Encino, pp. 64-75. 15. Harman, Gilbert (1986): “The meanings of logical constants”, in Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Ernest Le Pore (ed), Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, pp. 125-134. http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/concepts/meaning.html 16. Grice, Paul (1989): “Indicative Conditionals” (Chapter 4), Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass, pp. 58-85. Additional resources Online encyclopaedias provide invaluable back-up. Entries under formal systems, counterfactuals, Frege, conditionals, etc, are worth consulting. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu This contains thorough, lengthy, survey articles. If you are writing your essay on a particular suite of topics, look them up in the Stanford. The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy http://www.iep.utm.edu/ This contains shorter articles than the Stanford does, but they are still thorough and are often at the right level of generality for an exploration of concepts with which you should be familiar, but on which you do not need to be an expert. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy can be accessed through the library. http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/databases/learn_database/public.asp?record=routledge The articles here are much shorter. The Routledge is a good repository of quick references and reminders. The following books can also be found on short loan or in the General Library (or online) and contain useful background or further reading on general issues dealt with in this course: Beall, J. C. and Restall, Greg (2006): Logical Pluralism, Clarendon, Oxford, chapter 2. (online) Grayling, A.C. (1997): An introduction to philosophical logic, Blackwell, Oxford. Haack, Susan (1978): Philosophy of Logics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. van Eemeren, et al. (1996): Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory, L. Erlbaum, Mahwah, N.J. 4 van Eemeren et al.(2001): Crucial Concepts in Argumentation Theory, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam. In addition to the required and recommended readings we have given you may wish to consult other material if you are writing an essay on a particular topic. You should discuss this with me. 5 4. LECTURE SCHEDULE (with associated readings) Week 1 (3 March) Logic and ordinary reasoning: What on earth is Philosophy of Logic? Can anybody remember what we did in Stage I logic? What is the connection, if any, between logical theory and ordinary, everyday reasoning? Aristotle’s approach; some history of logic; logic as a describer, evaluator, or justifier of ordinary reasoning; logical (and other) mistakes in everyday reasoning; Psychologism versus Anti-Psychologism; input from cognitive psychology. Required Readings (a) Girle, Roderick (1976): Notes on the History of Logic, Notes for PD220: Applied and Modal Logic, Philosophy Dept, University of Queensland (in coursebook). (b) Johnson-Laird, Philip et al. (2000): “Illusions in reasoning about consistency”, Science, 288, pp. 531-2 (in coursebook). The following two readings are difficult, but they are useful if you wish to pursue this topic. Harman argues that logic has no special relevance to ordinary reasoning and Knorpp disagrees. (c) Harman, Gilbert (1984): “Logic and Reasoning”, Synthese, 60, pp. 107-127 (in coursebook). (d) Knorpp, William Max (1997): “The Relevance of Logic to Reasoning and Belief Revision: Harman On ‘Change In View’”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78, pp. 78-92 (in coursebook). I have also provided a written expansion of my material for this class, which is a separate document on CECIL: (e) Lecture Notes on the relevance of Logic to ordinary reasoning Week 2 (9 March) Formal languages; semantics for formal languages.