PHI 200 - Logic
Course Outline
Program: | Humanities |
Course Number: | PHI 200 |
Course Title: | Logic |
Credits: | 3.0 |
Prerequisites: | none |
A. Catalog Description of Course
This course introduces the student to informal and formal reasoning and the principles of scientific reasoning.
B. Goals
1. To enable the student to distinguish fallacious from non-fallacious reasoning in everyday discourse and formal reasoning.
2. To know what scientific theories are, how they are constructed and evaluated and their relation to concepts of truth.
C. Objectives
The student will be able to:
1. Employ the basic vocabulary and methodologies of logic.
2. Define and identify arguments and distinguish deductive from inductive arguments.
3. Understand the relation of the concepts of truth, validity and soundness.
4. Understand the concept of logical form and be able to use specific logical forms such as conditionals to test arguments for validity.
5. Identify fallacious reasoning: psychological, material and formal in everyday conversation and popular media forms.
6. Use the concepts of theory construction and evaluation to both construct and evaluate hypotheses reliability relative to assigned problems.
D. Outline of Course Content
I. Examination of the nature and purpose of arguments and the concept of fallacy.
II. Explanation and application of the concepts of psychological, material and formal fallacies through identification of various examples of such fallacies in persuasive material and explanation of the exact nature of the mistake in reasoning.
III. Exploration of the nature of inductive or scientific reasoning.
E. Suggested Texts
Any introductory text in reasoning such as Fearnside, W. Ward (1989) About Thinking (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall).
F. Suggested Modes, Media, and Techniques of Instruction
Discussion of exercises in text, handouts of persuasive reasoning in which the student must identify fallacious reasoning and explain why it is fallacious, deliberate construction of fallacious arguments by students, debates, analysis of scientific articles using vocabulary of theory construction and evaluation. Inductive, deductive and reflective thinking.
G. Suggested Reading List
Capaldi, Nicholas (1987) The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books).
Cohen, Morris R. (1934) Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company).
Copi, Irving M. (1990) Introduction to Logic New York/London: Macmillan).
Dewey, John (1938) Logic, the Theory of Inquiry (New York: H. Holt and Company).
Tarski, Alfred (1941) Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press).
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