Philosophy 2101: Introduction to Symbolic Logic

This course has four sections covering introductory concepts, Aristotelian logic, propositional logic, and predicate logic. This division is reflected in our text: Patrick Hurley’s A Concise Introduction To Logic, Ninth Edition. Each section covers the basic skills you will need to perform logical analyses and evaluations of argument. Homework is due almost weekly. Additional handouts offer a more philosophical understanding of selected topics. The first three sections is followed by an in class exam. The fourth section is followed by a comprehensive exam during finals week. The exams cover both the above text (objective problem solving type questions) and the additional handouts (essay philosophical questions). There are also three short essays due which will be exercises in reading short philosophical works and extracting the argument(s) and then applying the relevant logical tools you have learned in order to evaluate them. Fianlly, there is also a service learrning component where each student teaches visits an elementary school classroom in order to teach some of the logic that is covered in this class.