PY 102 - Logic

Credit Hours: 3

An introduction to the basic techniques of traditional symbolic deductive logic. Topics will include symbolization of ordinary language statements and arguments into logical notation; testing the validity of arguments by traditional methods (truth tables and natural deduction); formal and informal fallacies; the reduction ad absurdum method of refuting arguments; and inductive vs. deductive reasoning.

Fulfills SUNY General Education – Humanities.

Course Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

construct formal proofs (argumentations) of the deductive validity of arguments in the sentential calculus;
evaluate arguments in the sentential calculus by use of the method of assigning values or by the tree method;
demonstrate awareness both of the vital translation into English of the operators in the sentential calculus and of the difficulties with those translations; and
demonstrate some familiarity with the existential and universal quantifiers.

F/S (C, N, S)