A study of the fundamental principles of correct and incorrect argument, historical forms of deductive logic, and the significance of language and clear verbalization. Learning outcomes include formulating counter-examples, determining truth-values via truth conditions, translating English into sentential and predicate logic symbols, building truth tables, and applying natural deduction. PHL-214 requires no prerequisites.
Translating natural language into precise logical symbols
The course's core skill — translating English into sentential and predicate logic symbols — requires students to identify the precise logical structure hidden beneath the ambiguity of everyday language, a genuinely demanding translation skill.
Formal tools for testing argument validity objectively
PHL-214's truth tables and natural deduction techniques give students genuine, objective tools for testing whether an argument is valid, moving beyond intuitive judgments about whether an argument 'feels' convincing.
Key topics in PHL214
- Deductive logic principles
- Truth tables and truth conditions
- Translating English into logical symbols
- Sentential and predicate logic
- Natural deduction
- Formulating counter-examples
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Worked example: objective validity testing versus gut feeling
- Intuitive approach: Judging an argument valid because its conclusion feels convincing
- PHL-214's approach: Formally testing that same argument's validity using truth tables or natural deduction, independent of whether the conclusion feels intuitively correct
- Lesson: PHL-214 teaches that formal logic provides objective validity-testing tools that don't depend on subjective intuition about an argument's persuasiveness
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Frequently asked questions
Natural language is genuinely ambiguous — the same English sentence can support multiple logical interpretations — and translating an argument into precise logical symbols forces students to resolve this ambiguity and identify the argument's actual logical structure clearly. PHL-214 requires this translation because it's what makes rigorous, objective validity testing possible, which analyzing arguments only in their ambiguous natural-language form wouldn't reliably support.
Intuitive judgments about an argument's persuasiveness can be influenced by factors unrelated to its actual logical validity — rhetorical skill, prior beliefs, emotional appeal — while truth tables and natural deduction provide genuinely objective, mechanical procedures for determining whether an argument's conclusion truly follows from its premises. PHL-214 teaches these formal tools because they give students a reliable, bias-resistant method for evaluating argument validity that intuition alone cannot provide.