Philosophy | Elementary Logic
P150 | 1436 | Crowley
Information is everywhere. In fact, I "guarantee" that you are surrounded by it
right now! Don't panic, however. This is an opportunity, not a problem. With a
bit of practice we can discover the connections amongst all this information and
that will allow us to make the stuff work on our behalf!
In P150 we will meet the standard tool for organizing information - First Order
Logic (FOL) - and spend most of the semester "road-testing" it on worlds of our
own creation in order to discover just what our new tool (FOL) can do. We will
also spend a little time discussing how FOL might apply to our own world and
what, if any, limitations it may have.
This course will be valuable to anyone! More specifically, if you see yourself
being involved in technical information processing (computer science, library
science, science in general, business, etc., etc.) then this is a really great
foundation for that further work. On the other hand, even if the rest of your life is
spent on informal information process (You WILL be information processing one
way or another - I promise!) the practice you will get in this class in connecting
up pieces of information will be beneficial in its own right.
The assessment in this class will be based on 6 homework assignments, one per
week (each worth 15% of the final grade) and you in class participation (10%).
The class will be taught with the aid of MacIntosh computers.