Introductory Logic June 26 – July 29 2017

PHIL 151 http://logic.umwblogs.org

Dr. Craig Vasey Trinkle 235 ext 1342 .

Department of Classics, Philosophy, and Religion.

University of Mary Washington

First off, I have to share with you an honest assessment of the situation: although there is some convenience to the on-line format, it is harder to learn something well in an on-line environment than it is in a face-to-face classroom. This is in part because there is no one to confront you, encourage you, put you on the spot, repeat things to you, congratulate you, etc. Your own motivation is all you can rely on. It’s also because there is no one to ask questions of and get immediate feedback; this means you have to take more responsibility for knowing what questions you need answered, and asking them through one of our modes of communication.

The website I’ve set up contains all the information I deliver in classroom lectures –as written pages. There are a number of oral recordings and Powerpoint presentations that will also be helpful. I will be available via email and live online chats or even Skype if you want to go that route (in the first three weeks), to answer questions. These are all resources, but the key is: how will you put them to use? In an on-line class, you are on your own to do that.

To a greater degree than you may be accustomed to, you must read carefully, repeatedly, and well in order to be successful here. That begins with reading this syllabus carefully, repeatedly, and well. Some of you may be more accustomed to casual scanning when you read; if so, you need to change that. By the way, your work for this class will require that you read the entire on-line book, section by section in the order in which the chapters are arranged. Repeatedly, and well.

You must make yourself stay focused and make yourself work at Logic every day for a few hours. I would say this is going to require about 20-25 hours each week. This is crucial; you’ll need to constantly review what you’ve encountered and learned, or else it will fall right away. That is, you won’t learn anything if you don’t review it regularly and if you don’t return to the subject for at least a little while every day. Avoiding it for a few days will be extremely counterproductive. Because of this need to stay focused, there are numerous assignments and quizzes; don’t view them as a nuisance, but as the best help I can offer to get you to keep focused and to keep up with the task of learning Logic.

Consider: if this summer class were a face-to-face class, we would be meeting two hours/ day for four days/ week, and on top of that you would be doing about 2 hours of homework every day. That would be minimal. The on-line class requires more effort and more time on your part. Factor this into your planning for these five weeks. Be especially cognizant of your need to manage your time in Week 3; the midterm exam is in addition to the usual workload that week

Now to the course content:

Introductory Logic is a course that every student should take during the first year of college. No other course will be as dedicated to the task of understanding and sharpening analytical abilities and skills in general; the benefits of doing this course-work will show up throughout your college career and beyond college as well.

Some thinkers talk about Logic as a field concerned with the analysis of arguments, but that is much too narrow, since argument analysis presupposes appreciation of numerous conceptual distinctions and analytical techniques. We will be covering the basic conceptual foundations of Logic, as well as Informal Fallacies, Categorical Logic, Sentential Logic, and offering an introductory look at Predicate Logic. Although it is a Philosophy course, Logic can be thought of as a “practical skills” course. Success in a practical skills course of study requires practice, regular practice. The ideas or concepts themselves are not difficult to grasp, but the mastery of them only comes through the practice of applying them. Many students are tempted to think that since the concepts seem easy and obvious, little work is needed in the course. They are the ones who get C’s and lower in the course.

For this summer on-line version of the course, weekly papers reviewing the week’s material, a weekly response to another student’s paper (being thoughtful about the difference between what you and s/he provided as an account of the week’s material), and a requirement of twice-weekly discussions of exercises from the on-line book, will ensure that you are monitoring your grasp and appreciation of material. About a third of your grade will come from these papers and responses. Performance on online quizzes (very frequent short multiple choice quizzes), Monday Quizzes (30 minute written quizzes), and exams will account for about two thirds of your grade. A chat session via Canvas will be available every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday from 3 to 4 PM; I’m open to changing this time if I get feedback from you indicating we should (we could vary the hours on different days). You can also contact me by email (), and Skype sessions are also an option through week 3. You should send me questions by email or join the chat session with questions whenever you are puzzled or bogged down. However, DO NOT email me through or at Canvas; I do not use Canvas for receiving email, although I will post announcements through it. If you use that approach, I will not see your message.

You will be posting your weekly papers and assignments, and responses, to the appropriate Discussion folder in Canvas. Whenever you submit something to me by email or to the Discussion Forum, MAKE SURE YOUR NAME APPEARS IN THE FILENAME. It is not my responsibility to make sure that the correct name appears on the files submitted –if your name is not there, then I don’t know who submitted it.

The course content is delivered at http://logic.umwblogs.org, The chapters at the website (listed along the right hand side) are arranged in the order of the syllabus, and contain Powerpoint reviews of material as well as homework exercises for daily and weekly practice. I have added short voice recordings (mp3 format) to help with key concepts and to help walk through sample exercises. Monday Quizzes: you will access them anytime each Monday in the Discussion Forums and return them to my email address as an attachment within 30 minutes of accessing them. Exams will become available in the Discussions list on July 11 and July 29 at noon, and you will have 2 ½ hours in which to complete them and send them to my email address. If this timing does not work for you, let me know well in advance and we will make another arrangement.

Course Goals: Students will learn how to distinguish arguments from non-arguments, and inductive reasoning from deductive reasoning; how to identify fallacies of everyday reasoning; and how to interpret, represent, and determine consequences regarding arguments in three symbolic modes (categorical, propositional, predicate). This course satisfies a General Education requirement in the area of Quantitative Reasoning.

Syllabus.

I am not giving you a precise day-by-day schedule below because this course is asynchronous and I cannot expect you to all be on exactly the same schedule. On the other hand, as I said above, working on this every day is really essential. I’m telling you where you should be in the text by Tuesday and Thursday each week; it’s up to you on Sunday each week to make sure you are aiming for the Tuesday goal. You’ll have a paper due each Saturday reviewing the work of the week, and a response paper each Sunday. Deadlines are days and times by which you must submit materials –you are also welcome to submit them in advance of the deadlines.

Before we begin the course, read through the syllabus carefully twice. Send me an email no later than June 26 telling me that you have read and understood the syllabus: weekly papers, weekly assignments, weekly response papers, on-line Canvas quizzes, Monday quizzes, and how to contact me. If I do not have this email from you by June 26, I will dock 10 points off your grade at the end of the semester. Make sure you understand the pace and nature of the assignments, and that you are clear on the due dates. Any questions? Email me or come to the chat in Canvas on Monday at 3 pm.

At Canvas, take a good look at Quizzes and the Discussions page. Assignments are listed in the order in which they are to be done; there are quite a few of the forums –these are the on-line substitutes for looking you in the eye in the classroom and putting you on the spot. The Monday Quizzes will show up in the Discussion Forum each Monday; until then they are unpublished.

Week 1 June 25 - July1 Basics: terminology for arguments and non-arguments; deduction and induction; counter-examples: Read the Introduction and all of Chapters 1-5. (You need not read all of the Jabberwocky selection in Chapter 2, but at least the first few verses.)

By Tuesday you should have finished Chapter 3, and have all the basic terminology from chapters 2 and 3 well in hand: Use/ mention, meaning (sense/ reference); premise and conclusion indicator words, seven kinds of non-arguments. Post discussions of homework exercises from all three chapters, as well as questions in the Forums for me. Commit these distinctions to memory: practice listing the non-arguments in your head several times a day.

By Thursday you should have completed Chapter 4 (the distinction between, and the evaluative language for, induction and deduction—including knowing the five patterns of deductive, and the six patterns of inductive, reasoning) and Chapter 5 (validity and counter-examples). You are working on committing quite a vocabulary list to memory this week. Practice memorizing the vocabulary by writing the various lists multiple times daily. You will find that this really works! You can do it!

A review discussion of all of this should be in your 4-5 page Paper & Assignment due Saturday, July 1 by Noon. Advice on how to approach these papers: think of it as though you wanted to impress your parents when they said "What did you learn this week at school?" It would take some explaining, and you'd have to put it in your own words, watching out for the likelihood that from time to time they would say "I don't really quite see what you mean, or why that matters," and you'd need to make it clear. (Do not write the paper as a letter to your parents, however! Write it as a college-level paper! Also, be sure to meet all my expectations about quality-- see below, p. 9.)

Assignment 1: (The “assignment” is not part of the 4-5 page paper. It is in addition to those pages.)

1.  Follow the examples called “The price of gas,” “The case of the ACA,” etc., and make up one good example of each of the 7 non-arguments on a subject of your choice.

2.  Also make up 2 examples for each of the deductive and inductive patterns (this will make a total of 22 argument examples).

Week One Paper & Assignment is due in the designated Canvas Discussion forum by Noon Saturday, July 1 as a Word document with your name in the filename. The paper should be 4-5 pages long, followed by the Assignment (another 2-3 pages). (Add page numbers to your file using Insert and Page Number in Word.) Your response to another student’s paper is due by Noon Sunday.

QUIZZES: By Saturday you must complete Canvas Quizzes 1, 2 and 3. Each of these has a “retake” option, which is called version “A.” These quizzes will be available beginning on Tuesday June 27 at 5 pm, until midnight Saturday July 1; you can take them anytime during the week but the smart approach will be to space them out, e.g., Quiz 1 on Tuesday, Quiz 2 on Wednesday, Quiz 3 on Friday. Each time, between taking the first quiz (Canvas Quiz 1) and taking the retake (Canvas Quiz 1A), you should post to the Canvas Homework Discussion forum about what you got wrong: ask a question, say why you thought the answer was what you thought, so you can get some helpful feedback. Take these quizzes seriously: they are the primary way for you to know whether you are really learning (internalizing, remembering, mastering) the material; and they count for 25% of your course grade.

Week 2 July 2 – July 8 Informal Fallacies; Categorical logic: propositions, operations, syllogisms: Read all of Chapters 6 & 7.

Monday Quiz 1. This will not show up in Canvas until 12:01 am on Monday. Anytime on Monday, access the quiz, and return it to within 30 minutes, pledged.

By Tuesday you should have completed Chapter 6 (Informal Fallacies), and Chapter 7 through 7.1 (Venn Diagrams). Post discussion of HW examples.

By Thursday, you should have completed the rest of chapter 7 on Categorical Logic. Post discussion of HW examples you work on.

Assignment 2.

1.  Fallacies. Post two examples you find, encounter or make up, of each of the 21 fallacies of reasoning. Memorize the four families of fallacies and the names of their members. (To memorize them, practice writing them four or five times each day from memory.) Read the examples posted by other students of the fallacies, and comment on them, especially if you wonder if they actually fit the pattern. Although this is part of the Assignment due with your paper on Saturday, post these in Canvas in the Fallacy Forum by July 4 so everyone can look at one another’s examples before diving into the next subject of the week.

2.  Categorical Logic.

3.  Fill in and post (at the Homework Discussions Week 2 Forum) the exercise called HW on square Feb 12 at the end of 7.2.1. Post this by Thursday. Also submit it with your paper on Saturday. See examples in Canvas Files: “Categorical Review.”