The Logical Flow of the Course on Logic

The course is divided into four parts.

Logic and illogic in language

The course is not about you being able to befriend a professor of logic. Its aim is to sharpen your logical thinking skills, making you a prudent citizen of the modern world—someone who can argue reasonably while presenting their ideas, and recognize weak arguments.

The best way to accomplish this goal is by exploring frequently used logical fallacies. It’s important to recognize them in all their different forms. After an introduction to what is not logic (logical pretense), we’ll explore the deep link between logic and language because logic resides within the folds of human language. We’ll first create a simplistic logical language and then complicate it in stages.

Formal introduction to logic

Once we establish the basic constructs of a logical language, in the next chapter, we’ll formally delve into understanding what logic is. This chapter will be crucial for this course because it‘s important to know the relationship between truth and validity in logical arguments. To ensure an effective learning experience, we‘ve designed it such that there’s only an appropriate amount of theory finely balanced by practical problem-solving and applications from real life.

The course will also briefly touch on the role of logic in the process of scientific inquiry.

The theories of logic

The next three chapters will present a historical sequence of the development and evolution of logic theories that explain how the natural phenomenon of logic works, starting from Aristotle’s first attempt at mechanizing logical arguments. We’ll pay special attention to modern propositional logic, but the objective of theoretical learning would be to navigate interesting everyday scenarios.

Problem-solving using logic

At the end of the course, we’ll solve logic-based puzzles following the 4-step method of George Polya, and we’ll finish by establishing a living link between logic and computing.

We hope this brief introduction to the course has made you excited about taking this journey into the world of logic. Let’s begin!