Professor Judy Pelham
pelham@yorku.ca

Office hours:

Prof Pelham will be available to hold office hours on campus once per week. The specific time will be announced during the first class. Appointments may also be arranged via email.

Logic is the study of argument and proof, and it is basic to philosophy as well as many other disciplines.  This course attempts to teach you to recognize three important concepts that you will use in philosophy and in a lot of other academic work: deductive, validity, equivalence, and consistency.

Here is an example of a deductively valid argument:

Either the Liberals will win, or the Communist Party of Canada will win.

The Liberals will not win.

Therefore, the Communist Part of Canada will win.

This argument is valid because of its structure, not because of the truth of its premises or its conclusion.  The course will teach you to distinguish validity of an argument from the truth of its conclusion.  In this and other ways its goal to make you a better reader and a better debater.

Technical requirements for taking the course: You must be able to access the course website, you will use it to take some quizzes and to access course notes and other information. Our course website is on eClass,York’s Moodle-based system.  The course lectures, tutorials and tests are all held in person.

Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:

Student Guide to Moodle

Zoom@YorkU Best Practices 

Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide

Computing for Students Website

Student Guide to eLearning at York University

To determine Internet connection and speed, there are online tests, such as Speedtest, that can be run.]

Times and locations:

The course lectures will be held every Monday in Curtis Lecture Hall A from 2:30 to 3:20 pm.  Please be on time. In-person tutorials held on Wednesdays, you must choose one in order to successfully register for the course.

Course Kit containing sections from The Logic Book, 2^nd Ed. It will be available via the York bookstore.

Tutorial Homework (in person & prepared) & participation: 15%

Weekly Quizzes (online only): 15%

SL Test (in person):  25%

SD Test (in person): 20%

Final Exam (on PL, in person): 25%

In this course, students are expected to read the textbook, and to attend the lectures as their sources for the subject matter of logic. Each week the course address some central ideas of logic and encourages skill building in various areas. But this is primarily a skill building course in a very particular way.  Doing the class homework exercises and practicing exercises in tutorial with other students is an important part of acquiring these skills.  Tutorials are held once a week in a group of 25 students. Because logic involves right and wrong answers a large component of the grade will be in-person tests. These tests are taken roughly one month apart and focus on problem solving that is practiced in tutorial sessions.

A full syllabus including the dates of the quizzes, tests, and details of the homework will be provided on the website before the first day of class, and questions will be answered during the first class.

1. To recognize the logical structure of sentences in English. To make this very clear we translate the logical words of English  (e.g. “and”) into symbols, and practice doing such translations.
2. To recognize the logical structure of deductive arguments in English, and to be able to recognize the logical validity of an argument as well as be able to construct a counter example to prove that it is logically invalid.  We also discuss when two sentences are logically equivalent, and when two sentences are inconsistent.
3. To be able to construct proofs that demonstrate the logical validity of sp,e English arguments.