Formal Logic PHIL5068

  • Academic Session: 2024-25
  • School: School of Humanities
  • Credits: 20
  • Level: Level 5 (SCQF level 11)
  • Typically Offered: Semester 1
  • Available to Visiting Students: Yes
  • Collaborative Online International Learning: No

Short Description

This course introduces students to the meta-theory of propositional and predicate logic. Topics include expressive adequacy and soundness and completeness theorems.

Timetable

2 lectures per week for 9 weeks, plus 4 seminars. The course may not run every year. Options running this year are available on MyCampus.

Requirements of Entry

Standard entry to Masters at College level. Although there are no formal pre-requisites, this course is primarily aimed at students who have taken a course in elementary logic and wish to pursue the subject further, in a rigorous manner.

Excluded Courses

None

Co-requisites

None

Assessment

A two hour exam of formal logic problems; a written assignment of formal logic problems to be completed in the student's own time equivalent to 2500 words.

Course Aims

The course aims to:

■ introduce students to the rigorous study of formal logic, including formal syntax and semantics

■ explore the easier meta-theoretical results of propositional and predicate logic

Intended Learning Outcomes of Course

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

 

■ Use the method of proof by induction on length of formula and length of proof;

■ Determine whether a set of connectives is expressively adequate

■ Prove the soundness and completeness theorems for propositional logic

■ Explain the main ideas in Tarski's truth definition for predicate logic

 

Assessment for this course is at Masters Level.

Minimum Requirement for Award of Credits

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.