Hello, I am a student who has had a great interest in Philosophy ever since I was young. As a result, in my time at community college, I have taken various classes in ethics, logic, history of philosophy, etc to fulfill the igetc and maintain my status as a full time student. In fact, I have fulfilled all the requirements to be a philosophy major except for one class, symbolic logic (aka mathematical logic, logic for computer science majors, categorical syllogism, etc).
I have decided to minor or co-major in philosophy so I have decided to take the class over spring. The problem is that the only class offered is at 7 30 in the morning (I am a night owl) and the professor’s rating of easiness is 2.2 in Ratemyprofessor.com. Though I do not consider myself anyway intelligent, I am a studious person and I have done well in other low 2.x rated classes before. However, the problem this time is I am not really a math person and do not think I will do well.
To those student who have taken it, how difficult is it? Also, if anyone can give me their two cents regarding the course, that would be most welcomed.
I took a critical thinking class over the last semester and we did some work with truth tables, but it was by no means a mathematical logic class. However, if you’re as into philosophy as it seems, I think you’ll like the class – just drink coffee when you wake up haha. It’s probably worth noting that as a philosophy major myself, I’ve found the difficulty of philosophy teachers on ratemyprofessor to be somewhat misleading. If you’re into a specific class/major you’re gonna have a much easier time doing the work than others who are dreadfully attempting it without any interest/curiosity present, and I think many of the negative ratings on ratemyprofessor come from students who were not interested in/curious about the course material.
Symbolic logic actually sounds pretty cool. There’s a lot of logic/reasoning buried within language that we are often unaware of, and logic classes help bring those aspects of human language up to the surface at a comprehendible level.
I took symbolic logic at community college, so I can give you an idea. I hope this will be helpful.
It’s mathematical in the sense that there’s a lot of usage of symbols to represent logical statements. Here’s such an example:
A --> B.
~B.
—————
Therefore, ~A.
This may look complicated, but it was all conceptually easy for me to grasp, provided that I studied enough. Certainly, everyone’s different, but generally, symbolic logic isn’t the kind of class that a lot of philosophy majors fail in, even if many of them find the experience uncomfortable. There’ll be points where, at first, you think you can’t do it, but it honestly is easier than it looks, for the most part. Certain symbols are used to represent certain concepts in language and logic. The tilde sign, ~, that you see next to the letter B in step two of the problem simply means “not.” It negates whatever statement it’s attached to, and letters are often used to represent statements. It’s strange at first and it’s so foreign only because most people have never taken classes like it before, but the material is mostly intuitive to grasp from my experience. Harder subjects in symbolic logic, like proofs, require practice and extra studying, but are not insurmountable at all.
I ended up getting an A in that symbolic logic class with a decent, but not insane amount of studying, and I’m absolutely awful at math.
@lindyk8, the first premise reads: A implies B, which also means B will only happen if, and only if, A happens; it can also read “if A then B”. The second premise reads the negation of B, or “not” B, which means B didn’t occur. Given premise 1, which states that A implies B, and premise 2, which states that B didn’t occur, we can conclude with absolute certainty that A didn’t occur.
Think of it this way: A = I live in San Francisco, B = I live in California.
If I live in S.F. then I live in California (A -> B)
I don’t live in California (~B)
Therefore, I don’t live in S.F. (~A)
You can replace A and B with any valid claims and the argument will always be sound.
A → B does not mean that B is true only if A is true. For example:
A = “I live in San Francisco.”
B = “I live in California.”
It is possible for B to be true without A being true (e.g. “I live in Oakland.”). However, if B is false (e.g. “I live in Nevada.”), then A is false (San Francisco is not in Nevada).
So A → B means “if A then B” or “A only if B”, not “B only if A”.
I find that whole symbolic logic fascinating, but I have a question. When is it used? Is it used in certain professions? Or is it used as shorthand in notes? :-bd
It’s primarily used in evaluating the claims made by various philosophers and to hone one’s reasoning skills in general; other kinds of logic, such as modal logic, serve these purposes as well.
It also seems to be very useful to computer science majors for reasons that I have yet to fully understand.
If you say “A if and only if B”, then you are making the claim that A → B and B → A, not just the weaker claim A → B (which you would make by saying “B if A” or “A only if B”).
@cayton Philosophy logic classes help with coding because a large percent of most code is made up of “if/else statements” which are if/then statements in terms of being true or false. Alan Turing, the guy who arguably invented computation machines (computers), coded the entire system using elongated truth tables.
I’m going to be honest, I took a symbolic logic course during my first year of college because I was curious, and I withdrew on the last day because I was failing. It was the hardest class I have ever taken. I think that the Greek letters threw me off the most, or maybe it was just because I was a freshman taking a class filled with juniors and seniors, so I was too inept for it. It sounds like something you’re interested in though, and I wasn’t as interested as I should have been, so I did poorly. (I did try my damnedest, though.) I think you’ll do fine as long as you pay attention.
