PHIL& 106 - Intro to Logic

Credits: 5
Variable Credit Course: No

Lecture Hours: 55
Lab Hours: 0
Worksite/Clinical Hours: 0
Other Hours (LIA/Internships): 0

Course Description: Introduces the study of reasoning, including the ability to recognize, analyze, criticize and construct the main types of argument and proof.

Prerequisite: ENGL 099 with a C or higher (or placement into ENGL& 101).
Distribution Requirements:

Humanities Distribution Requirement

Meets FQE Requirement: No
Integrative Experience Requirement: No

Student Learning Outcomes

Understand the dialectical character of genuinely fruitful argumentation.
Parse arguments into their components: claims, grounds, warrants, and backing.
Evaluate the strength of arguments in terms of qualifications, rebuttals and exceptions.
Recognize the need for and ways to acquire as much relevant information as possible before making any final argumentative assessments.
Assess their own pre-critical orientation.
Recognize and address fallacies involving faulty grounds.
Recognize and address fallacies involving faulty warrants.
Translate natural language into standard form.
Translate natural language into symbolic language.
Recognize and use logical inferences, such as modus ponens and modus tollens, logical fallacies, and recognize formal soundness and validity.

Course Contents

Introduction to logic and the environment of argumentation
Claims and how to evaluate claims
Grounds, inductive and deductive modes of reasoning
Warrants and Rules
Backing and its relationship to warrants
Qualified claims, tentative discoveries, Rebuttals and Exceptions
Presumtions,quandries, relevance and context in argumentation
Fallacies involving faulty grounds
Fallacies involving faulty warrants
An introduction to formal logic: translations from natural language to standard form and standard form to symbolic form

Instructional Units: 5