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.