This text is designed for those instructors who desire a comprehensive introduction to formal logic that is both rigorous and accessible to students encountering the subject for the first time. Numerous, carefully crafted exercise sets accompanied by clear, crisp exposition give students a firm grasp of basic concepts and take the student from sentential logic through first-order predicate logic, the theory of descriptions, and identity. As the title suggests, this is a book devoted not merely to logic; students will encounter an extraordinary amount of philosophy as well. Upon completing the first two parts of the text, a student will be well prepared for advanced courses in analytic philosophy. The last part deals with supplemental matters-informal fallacies, modal logic, and inductive logic, among others.
This was the best intro textbook that I encountered during the time that I taught introductory symbolic logic. If I were to teach logic again, I would definitely look at the latest edition of this text.
The advantage over other intro symbolic logic texts is that it requires students to understand what they are doing in order to do proofs. (The previous textbook I used, not one that I chose but one that I was required to teach from, only taught students to crank through proofs and did not emphasize the ideas at all.)
This was the textbook for the one and only course I was assigned to teach while a T.A. at Loyola University Chicago. Comments about that are included in the review of the Instructor's Manual for Logic and Philosophy. About this particular introductory text I have no particular feelings. Naturally, I preferred the Tapscott text used when, a couple of years prior, I was introducted to symbolic logic.
After taking a college intro course in logic I was eager to learn more. This book was a wonderful introduction to symbolic logic, and I was able to get through most of the sentential logic section (first half of the book) over break. It's full of exercises, and it explains how to do things step by step. If you want to study symbolic logic on your own, then I recommend this book.
it was a nice book for the course. easy to read. truly made the concepts easy to understand. without it, i dont think i would have gotten the grade i did in Logic.
I bought this some while ago. An old girlfriend who was more into mathematical logic was more the inspiration behind me getting this.
In progress
Contents
Preface
Chapter One:Introduction 1. The Elements of an Argument - 1 2. Deduction and Induction - 4 3. Argument Forms - 6 4. Truth and Validity - 8 5. Soundness - 11 6. Consistency - 11 7. Consistency and Validity Compared - 12 8. Contexts of Discovery and Justification - 14 Key Terms - 15