<p>So I'm thinking about taking philosophy 31: Logic first Course this winter (since 7: intro to mind isn't offered). Is 31 "harder" in any way or are the classes completely comparable in terms of difficulty (so the order I take them in doesn't matter)?</p>
<p>Phil 31 is spectacularly easy (but it’s not a GE, if you’re taking it for that reason). I took it my first quarter, first year.</p>
<p>I’m now a 3rd year taking Phil 7 and the class is completely different. Not harder, necessarily, but the format, content and every other aspect of the class is utterly incomparable. Phil 31 is about as relevant to Phil 7 as Math 115A is.</p>
<p>Phil 31 is an introduction to modern symbolic logic. Logic is the branch of philosophy that studies reasoning, and modern logic (i.e. Frege’s) essentially tries to make logic mathematical (actually, it tried, but failed, to reduce math to logic.) just google/youtube ‘symbolic logic’ and you’ll find some pretty decent links/videos showing you what it is. </p>
<p>A lot of math/computer science/linguistics majors take a class in modern logic, and it isn’t really ‘philosophical’ in the sense of what people would think about philosophy. (in fact, from what i’ve seen, mathematics has tried to claim logic as a branch of mathematics)</p>
<p>Are you guys saying that you have to be a natural when it comes to math in order to be successful in Phil 31? I’m only in Math 3A right now…</p>
<p>Logic isn’t mathematical, it’s like metamathematical (i.e logic is the reason that math makes sense to you.) It was taken to be a branch of philosophy for like 2k years (it started and was dominated by Aristotle until Frege came around in the 1800s and pretty much revolutionized the field.)</p>
<p>an example of something you’d learn in logic is like modus ponens which works like:</p>
<p>If P then Q
P
Therefore, Q</p>
<p>(e.g. if you have 2 + 2, then you have 4; you have 2 + 2, therefore, you have 4)</p>
<p>^ Yup! P is sufficient to have Q. Q is necessary to have P, but you can have Q without having P.</p>
<p>If not Q, then not P is also valid.</p>
<p>So now that we have conditional reasoning down, let’s buckle down on the other question types that will appear in this LR section. Oh nvm :)</p>
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<p>That’s the textbook for the class (it’s free, and the hw is done in a free computer program), if you want a taste of the material</p>