I am not scheduled to teach logic currently. The material on this page includes my notes and sample exams from previous logic courses. The material covers all of first-order logic, except the use of functions is only mentioned at the end. The content of the course focuses on showing how logic can be useful for understanding how information is communicated, by way of logical and conversational implicature. This is useful in analyzing how true but misleading information is communicated. This course is significantly harder than the typical introductory logic course. I only use the notes without any additional textbook. My students (at a typical state university) were able to "learn" all this material in one 14 week semester. The dropout rate for the course was about 50%, which was typical for similar courses at the university that covered significantly less material.

I use a true tree (semantic tableaux) proof system because the alternative, natural deduction systems, typically require some cleverness on the part of the student learning the proof system. My guess is that the cleverness that one hones by doing logic proofs is not transferrable to other contexts, and so is mostly useless to students who do not continue to learn more advanced logic.

The time saved is dedicated to reviewing sophisticated translations, concentrated study on translating conditionals and more advanced quantifier work, including some primitive computability issues. The course culminates with a discussion of computability and how first order logic can be used to clarify conceptal relations. For example, by knowing which people are male and which people are female and which people are parents of whom, one can determine logically who are cousins, who are aunts, and who are ancestors of whom. One interesting result is that the seemingly simple concept of ancestor cannot be adequately captured in first order logic. The course also includes material useful to students studying for their law school entrance exams.

Notes

My course notes. 95 pages of love. Because I typeset the notes in LaTeX and made a search and replace error, there are many spots where the truth tables are messed up. I'll fix this sometime soon. Please contact me if you spot any others errors in the text.

Practice Exams on Propositional Logic with Truth Tables: A1, A2, A3, A4, with answer keys A1, A2, A3, A4.

Practice Exams on Propositional Logic with Truth Trees: B1, B2, B3, with answer keys B1, B2, B3.

Practice Exams on Predicate Logic: C1, C2, C3, C4, with answer keys C1, C2, C3, C4.

Practice Exams on Relational Logic with Equality: D1, D2, D3, D4, with answer keys D1, D2, D3, D4.

Practice Comprehensive Final Exams: E1, E2, E3, E4, with answer keys E1, E2, E3, E4.