Topics Logic

Question Presently I am a first year philosophy major and I am interested in taking an Introduction to Symbolic logic course next year. However, I am worried that since my background in math is very weak, taking that class would just be torture for me. I was wondering how math-dependent is symbolic logic? I recently studied the informal and formal fallacies in an ethics class which I found to be easy...does that mean anything? Thanks in advance for the reply.

Accepted:
March 3, 2007

Comments

I would say that a well-taught first course in formal logic would presuppose no mathematical knowledge and no mathematical sophistication. The material is technical in nature and freely employs symbols and terms drawn from the vernacular of mathematics -- but all these should be explained by your instructor. From teaching this material many times, I know that some "math phobic" students freeze up at the sight of parentheses and greek letters. But I always tell them that these symbols are their friends! They serve to make our lives easier by allowing us to say just what we want to say very briefly and perspicuously. We could in principle do without them -- but that would in fact make our lives a lot harder.