Philosophy 111-024
Foundations of Logical Reasoning
Spring 2008

Click here for the syllabus.  Click here to be directed to Blackboard -- there is a Blackboard site for this section.

Scroll to bottom for newest entry.  Please check this page frequently for announcements, assignments, web links of interest, and so on.

To begin with, you might want to see our department web site, which includes this list of student research tools (with some amusements at the bottom) as well as a variety of information about philosophy and our faculty.

Besides what it says in the syllabus, here are more reasons you shouldn't cheat.

Here is George Orwell's classic essay "Politics and the English Language," which makes many interesting points about the relationship between thought and language, including his observation that while being good at one tends to make one better at the other, it's also true that being sloppy at one makes one sloppy at the other.

Here is Aristotle defending the principle of non-contradiction: go here, and scroll down to Book IV chapter 4.

What do I think of our textbook?

NEW: Feb 5 2008:
Additional reading assignment to accompany Chapter 6 in your textbook -- Max Shulmans's short story "Love is a Fallacy" is quite funny, and therefore worth reading, but as an added bonus, its treatment of logical fallacies is accurate and helpful.  Give it a read!

Entirely optional exercises involving Sherlock Holmes:
Read this excerpt from The Sign of Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle. 
1. Holmes figures out that Watson got his watch from his (Watson's) brother, and furthermore, he figures out that Watson's brother "was a man of untidy habits--very untidy and careless. He was left with good prospects, but he threw away his chances, lived for some time in poverty with occasional short intervals of prosperity, and finally, taking to drink, he died."  Can you reconstruct the reasoning Holmes uses here? 
2. Holmes figures out that Watson has been to the Wigmore Street Post Office, and that furthermore the reason he went there was to send a telegram.  Can you reconstruct the reasoning Holmes uses here also?
Additional exercise in reconstruction: Holmes' deduction at the end of this story about how he knew who the killer was.