Introduction to Logic

When you study logic you study something you’ve already been doing most of your life: reasoning, or making inferences. Making inferences is like connecting the dots that make up a picture, or recognizing how things hang together. It’s a way of making connections. For example, if you’re lactose intolerant, and you discover that the food on your plate contains ricotta cheese, you’ll probably infer or conclude that you shouldn’t eat it. Studying the rules and patterns that govern this ability can be fascinating. The study of logic also enlarges our capacity to recognize, analyze and evaluate arguments. In this course, we shall focus on a species of inference or argument called “deduction.” First we shall examine deduction in a formal context. You will learn how to use rigorous methods to determine the truth-values of complex propositions, as well as test arguments for validity using truth tables, the inference rules of natural deduction, and the basics of quantificational logic. Then we will study deductive arguments in an informal setting, examining the sort of reasoning found in everyday contexts. This part of the course will introduce you to the basics of speech act theory, as well as some of the tools needed to analyze the rhetorical dimension of real-life arguments.