Philosophy Department

Symbolic Logic
(PHLU 3204)

William Jaworski or Brian Frances

Humans are capable of altering their behavior, verbal and otherwise, in light of deductive consequences and in conformity with standards of logical consistency. Although Aristotle, the Stoics, and others developed formal techniques for the evaluation of logical consequence and consistency, the early 20th Century witnessed an unprecedented expansion in the scope and power of those techniques through the construction of formal languages based on mathematical principles. Students consider the modern development of formal logical techniques including propositional logic, first-order logic, and if time permits, a system of intensional logic (e.g. modal logic), and then explore some of the philosophical issues surrounding them