Professor Judy Pelham
pelham@yorku.ca

Logic is the study of argument and proof, and it is basic to philosophy as well as many (all)  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 work:  validity, equivalence 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 status 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:

This course will be online with the exception of some tutorials.

This means you must have a personal computer or other electronic device that allows you to play videos, type text, and use our eCourse website quite a lot. In other words, you need  a stable, strong internet connection, and a device with a certainly a microphone and preferably a camera.

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: You must listen to the online posted lectures each week, this part of the course is asynchronous.

Tutorials 1 and 2 are in-person, and tutorial 1 is at 12:30 pm and Tutorial 2 is at  1:30 pm on Keele campus.  The exact locations have not yet been announced.

Tutorials 3 and 4 are online, and tutorial 3 will be held at 3:30 pm and tutorial 4 at 4:30 pm. They are held live.

Virtual office hours: Prof Pelham will hold digital office hours most Mondays from 3:30 -4:30pm.

Course Pack containing selected chapters from the second edition of The Logic Book, by Merrie Bergman, James Moore, Jack Nelson.

This course attempts to teach you skills that center around the understanding and the use of logical concepts.  And while this does require some things be memorized, the course is attempting to teach you skills. You can only do well in this course by keeping up with the reading, lectures, and the problem solving. The skills you will be leaning are cumulative, that means learning one earlier skill will enable you to move on and acquire more complex skills.  For this reason in the study of logic, you are strongly urged to  follow the schedule one as the course goes on, and to regularly complete the group course problems and assigned quizzes.

This course will use a mastery method of grading. The core of your final grade in the course is based on how many skills you can “master.” To master an objective is to show that you can correctly solve that type of problem about 80% of the time.

The course will involve weekly reading, homework problems, tutorial meetings and online quizzes and tests.  We will discuss this in detail at the beginning of the class.

Tentative breakdown:

This course has four main elements:

1. Lectures will be pre-recorded and available online on Sundays before the week that they are used. The lectures will cover small distinct topics and are sequenced to provide a structured introduction to the skill building exercises involved. Students are urged to watch the between Sunday and Wednesday, in conjunction with reading the assigned section of the text.

Professor Pelham will hold a live synchronous meetings on Zoom as needed on Mondays.  For example, we will have a synchronous meeting for the first hour of the first class.   On Monday September 13 at 2:30 pm -3:30 pm, Prof. Pelham will introduce herself, discuss the course requirements and structure, as well as  the course grading system.  I will hold individual office hours each Monday at 3:30 pm.  If students would like a joint question and answer session on that week’s topic or a review of an earlier topic, they can request it and we will set it up for Mondays at 2:30pm.

2. Tutorials are held on Wednesdays and conducted by your teaching assistants. Tutorials 1 and 2 are in person, and tutorials 3 and 4 are online. During all these sessions you will work on specific problems assigned for that week Students both online and in person are asked to explain the answer to a question in their own words, either online or in class several times over the course of the term.
3. There will be short quizzes each week set up on eClass. Students are expected to complete those quizzes on their own between Thursday and Sunday of the ten middle weeks of the term.

4. There will be three timed tests during the term. Students will have a fixed amount of time to complete the test, and a window within which  they can attempt it

1. To recognize the logical structure of sentences in English. To make this very clear we translate the logical words of English 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 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 English arguments.