IFL2: the introductory chapters again

[Updated file, linking to revised document, brought to front of the blog] After a hiatus, it’s back to work on the second edition of my Introduction to Formal Logic. I’ve been tidying and (I hope!) slightly improving the first tranche of chapters — so here they are again (with an embarrassing number of corrections kindly provided by Scott Weller).

IFL2, Chapters 1 to 7 Download

A quick look at the Table of Contents should give you a good idea of what they are about if you don’t know the book. If you do know the first edition, then the main change is that I now take a somewhat different line about the notion of logical validity.

The headline news, anyway, is that these really are introductory chapters (general scene-setting before we start work in earnest on propositional logic in Chapter 9).  So I introduce ideas like: validity, deduction vs induction, showing validity by ‘proofs’, showing invalidity by ‘counterexamples’, logical validity vs validity (necessary preservation of truth more generally). The chapters aim to be accessible and reasonably user-friendly without talking down to the reader. So these chapters hopefully should be of interest and of use to any philosophy student about to start a logic course this next term/semester (indeed, they should be of use to any beginning philosopher). Do please spread the word, and do point prospective students to the link!

I’ll leave these chapters online, freely available, for the next couple of months or so. In the meantime, all comments/corrections as always most gratefully received!

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