FIRST DAYS OF A LOGIC COURSE

110115 DRAFT 10: Please send your frank corrections and suggestions. 18th International Conference of Logic Teaching (XVIII EIDL, 2015) University of Guadalajara 10:30 am, 10 November 2015 Logic teaching in the 21st century JOHN CORCORAN Philosophy, University at Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260-4150, USA E-mail: corcoran@buffalo.edu If you by your rules would measure what with your rules doth not agree, forgetting all your learning, seek ye first what its rules may be. —Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger. Abstract We are much better equipped to let the facts reveal themselves to us instead of blinding ourselves to them or stubbornly trying to force them into preconceived molds. We no longer embarrass ourselves in front of our students, for example, by insisting that “Some Xs are Y” means the same as “Some X is Y”, and lamely adding “for purposes of logic” whenever there is pushback. Logic teaching in this century can exploit the new spirit of objectivity, humility, clarity, observationalism, contextualism, and pluralism. Besides the new spirit there have been quiet developments in logic and its history and philosophy that could radically improve logic teaching. One rather conspicuous example is that the process of refining logical terminology has been productive. Future logic students will no longer be burdened by obscure terminology and they will be able to read, think, talk, and write about logic in a more careful and more rewarding manner. Closely related is increased use and study of variable-enhanced natural language as in “Every proposition x that implies some proposition y that is false also implies some proposition z that is true”. Another welcome development is the culmination of the slow demise of logicism. No longer is the teacher blocked from using examples from arithmetic and algebra fearing that the students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every mathematical truth was a tautology and that every mathematical falsehood was a contradiction. A fifth welcome development is the separation of laws of logic from so-called logical truths, i.e., tautologies. Now we can teach the logical independence of the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction without fear that students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every logical law was a tautology and that every falsehood of logic was a contradiction. This separation permits the logic teacher to apply logic in the clarification of laws of logic. This lecture expands the above points, which apply equally well in first, second, and third courses, i.e. in “critical thinking”, “deductive logic”, and “symbolic logic”.

Please send your frank corrections and suggestions. We are much better equipped to let the facts reveal themselves to us instead of blinding ourselves to them or stubbornly trying to force them into preconceived molds. We no longer embarrass ourselves in front of our students, for example, by insisting that “Some Xs are Y” means the same as “Some X is Y”, and lamely adding “for purposes of logic” whenever there is pushback. Logic teaching in this century can exploit the new spirit of objectivity, humility, clarity, observationalism, contextualism, and pluralism. Besides the new spirit there have been quiet developments in logic and its history and philosophy that could radically improve logic teaching. One rather conspicuous example is that the process of refining logical terminology has reached a critical mass. Future logic students will no longer be burdened by obscure terminology and they will be better able to read, think, talk, and write about logic in a more careful and more rewarding manner. Closely related is increased use and study of variable-enhanced natural language as in “Every proposition x that implies some proposition y that is false also implies some proposition z that is true”. Another welcome development is the culmination of the slow demise of logicism. No longer is the teacher blocked from using examples from arithmetic and algebra fearing that the students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every mathematical truth was a tautology and that every mathematical falsehood was a contradiction. A fifth welcome development is the separation of laws of logic from so-called logical truths, i.e., tautologies. Now we can teach the logical independence of the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction without fear that students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every logical law was a tautology and that every falsehood of logic was a contradiction. This separation permits the logic teacher to apply logic in the clarification of laws of logic. This lecture expands the above points, which apply equally well in first, second, and third courses, i.e. in “critical thinking”, “deductive logic”, and “symbolic logic”.

World Conference on Computers in Education VI, 1995

ABS'IRACT This paper describes the curriculum design of a two-semester introductory course for computer science majors. In each semester the course starts with logic and logic programming. The middle third of the semester continues with functional programming. The last third of the semester is dedicated to imperative programming. In such a presentation sequence reasoning leads to specifications which in turn lead to implementations. The concerns for 'WHAT?' are separated from concerns for 'HOW?'. The advantages and disadvantages of the inclusion of all three major programming paradigms are discussed.

2022

This replaces the earlier much-downloaded TYL Guide to logic books and other resources for self-study. It is also available as an at cost print-on-demand book. For more info see logicmatters.net.

We are much better equipped to let the facts reveal themselves to us instead of blinding ourselves to them or stubbornly trying to force them into preconceived molds. We no longer embarrass ourselves in front of our students, for example, by insisting that “Some Xs are Y” means the same as “Some X is Y”, and lamely adding “for purposes of logic” whenever there is pushback. Logic teaching in this century can exploit the new spirit of objectivity, humility, clarity, observationalism, contextualism, and pluralism. Besides the new spirit there have been quiet developments in logic and its history and philosophy that could radically improve logic teaching. One rather conspicuous example is that the process of refining logical terminology has reached a critical mass. Future logic students will no longer be burdened by obscure terminology and they will be better able to read, think, talk, and write about logic in a more careful and more rewarding manner. Closely related is increased use and study of variable-enhanced natural language as in “Every proposition x that implies some proposition y that is false also implies some proposition z that is true”. Another welcome development is the culmination of the slow demise of logicism. No longer is the teacher blocked from using examples from arithmetic and algebra fearing that the students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every mathematical truth was a tautology and that every mathematical falsehood was a contradiction. A fifth welcome development is the separation of laws of logic from so-called logical truths, i.e., tautologies. Now we can teach the logical independence of the laws of excluded middle and non-contradiction without fear that students had been indoctrinated into thinking that every logical law was a tautology and that every falsehood of logic was a contradiction. This separation permits the logic teacher to apply logic in the clarification of laws of logic. This lecture expands the above points, which apply equally well in first, second, and third courses, i.e. in “critical thinking”, “deductive logic”, and “symbolic logic”.

Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2020

Nowadays, logic plays an ever-increasing role in modern computer science, in theory as well as in practice. Logic forms the foundation of the symbolic branch of artificial intelligence and from an industrial perspective, logic-based verification technologies are crucial for major hardware and software companies to ensure the correctness of complex computing systems. The concepts of computational logic that are needed for such purposes are often avoided in early stages of computer science curricula. Instead, classical logic education mainly focuses on mathematical aspects of logic depriving students to see the practical relevance of this subject. In this paper we present our experiences with a novel design of a first-semester bachelor logic course attended by about 200 students. Our aim is to interlink both foundations and applications of logic within computer science. We report on our experiences and the feedback we got from the students through an extensive survey we performed at the end of the semester.

Innovacion Educativa, 2014

Two questions are addressed in this article: 1) How to make the students realize the importance of logic; and 2) how to teach the logical rules. The teacher may begin their logic class with an attempt to answer 1. Logic studies and records the basic moves of intelligence. When it analyses an argument A, it splits A into small steps. If each unit step seems to be intuitively right, then we accept A to be a valid argument. This "splitting" is the special skill of the logician. This skill helps one evaluate an ordinary argument in our day-to-day life. Question 2 is directly related to the didactics of logic. One may teach the rules of logic by demonstrating fallacies, i.e., by comparing the rules with their corresponding non-rules. If the teacher shows how the violation of a rule leads one to an intuitively undesired conclusion the student, learns the importance of rules.