Phil 210, Fall 2007

Prof: F.J. Pelletier

(jeffpell@sfu.ca)

 

Office Hours: Wed 11.30-12.15 in WMX 5661.  I am also available many other times – make an appointment by email to see me.  I have a desk in the Cognitive Science Lab (RCB 7406), where I can be found many times.

 

This is the home page for my Phil 210 course in Fall 2007.  You should check this page regularly for information relevant to the class.  There will be assignments for reading, links to the homework assignments, and dates of exams. (Plus whatever other information seems relevant).

 

The description of the course can be located here as a webpage and pdf document.  Make sure you get the relevant edition of the textbook, since the homework problems differ in different editions.  This edition also has a cd with student solutions to some of the homework problems.

 

In this course we will (attempt to) cover

  1. Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5; which is the sentential, or propositional, logic.
  2. Chapters 7 (but not 7.9), 8 (but not 8.6, 8.7), 10 (but not 10.6); which is the predicate logic, or First Order Logic.

 

You should start by reading Chapter 1 immediately.  You might also want to keep in mind that there is an index of symbols at the very end of the book which has the pages on which they are defined.  For future reference, you should note that the derivation rules relevant to Chapters 5 and 10 are on the inside cover of the book.

 

There will be homework every other week.  These will be graded by the marker for the course, Simon Pollon.  If you have questions/complaints about the grading of the homeworks, you should see him during his weekly office hour, or make an appointment. 

 

In total, your homework is worth 50% of your grade!  PLEASE do your work independently!! I am forced to take steps when I find out that your work is done collaboratively, and I don't like that!!!  Your homework is due at the beginning of class on the due date, so that I can go over it in class.  Turn in whatever work you have done by that time, even if just partial.  NO LATE HOMEWORK can be given credit.  Please write your name on each page of your homework, and your student id on the front.  Please also staple the pages together.

 

The exams will contain problems that are similar to ones from your homework, so it is important that you fully understand the homework.   YOU MUST HAVE A PASSING GRADE ON THE AVERAGE OF YOUR EXAMS IN ORDER TO PASS THE COURSE.  That is, you cannot pass the course solely on the basis of your homework grades.

 

Exams are open book, open note.  You may NOT bring electronic devices (laptops, phones, cameras, iPods, etc).  I will supply the paper to write on; you supply the pen or pencil.

 

If you are ill for an exam, you need to contact me before the exam (email works well for this).  When you return to class you need to give me a note from your medical doctor specifying the date of, and reason for, your absence.  Use the Health Care Provider Statement Form for this purpose.  You will not be able to take a deferred MidTerm exam, but instead the weight of the midterm exam will be added to the final exam, making the final exam worth 50% of the course.

 

Although we are not covering Chapter 4, the chapter on Truth Trees, I have mentioned it in class and anyone who wants to solve truth-table-oriented questions (such as those involving semantic validity, equivalence, logical truth, etc.) using truth trees rather than truth tables or shortcut truth tables is welcome to do so.  Such people ought to look at Chapter 4 and make sure they can follow the examples provided by the authors.

 

I am going to talk briefly about some material in Chapter 6.2 concerning Truth-Functional Completeness.  The goal will be to teach the result given in Metatheorem 6.2.1 (p. 241), and some of the corollaries mentioned on pp. 245-246, although we will not prove things by mathematical induction.  (You might have a homework problem out of some of their exercises on pp. 246-247 sometime!)

 

Here is Assignment #1, due on September 14th.

 

Here is Assignment #2, due on September 28th.

 

Here is Assignment #3, due on October 15th.

I will not be in town on Friday, October 5th—the usual day this would have been handed out.  It will instead be handed out on Wednesday, October 3rd.  Since Monday October 8th is the Thanksgiving holiday and classes are canceled, I am making this assignment due on Monday, October 15th, rather than the usual Friday (October 12th).

 

The midterm exam for this course will be on Friday, October 19th.

 

There is no class on Friday, October 26th, because I will be at the Western Canadian Philosophical Association meetings in Saskatoon.

 

Since that Friday is a day that Assignment #4 would normally have been passed out, I will pass it out early, on Wednesday October 24th.  It will be due on the regular date of November 2nd. 

 

In the meantime, you should read chapter 7 in the textbook.  Chapter 7 is the language of PL ("predicate logic", sometimes called "first-order logic", which in turn is often abbreviated FOL).  As we did with SL, we break this language into three parts of study: first how it relates to English, that is, how to translate natural language into PL.  I had said before that we would not do section 9 out of this chapter, although if enough people are super-keen, we might consider the part of section 9 on identity.  You should read the rest of Chapter 7 as soon as possible.  Your next homework (Assignment #4) will be on this chapter.  The second two parts are about the semantics for PL (Chapter 8, and the optional truth-tree method for PL in Chapter 9), and derivations in Chapter 10.

 

I have put three short pdf writeups about translating into Predicate Logic onto the website.  You should definitely read them.  Here they are: Pred.translate1, Pred.translate2, Pred.translate3.  These extend the discussion in the book about the ins and outs of translation in this realm.

 

Here is Assignment #4, due on November 2nd.

 

(I apologize again for putting the wrong Assignment #4 online earlier.  It is now the right one.  Also, I made a minor change to the first sentence of Pred.translate1 (just above), and you should look at the more recent version to get the full account of where BMN discuss predicate translations.)

 

Here is Assignment #5, due on Friday, November 16th.  The grader says he won't have them available to return until Friday, November 23rd.

 

Assignment #6 is somewhat harder and longer than the usual assignments, so I am turning it out on Wednesday, November 21st.  It is due on Friday, November 30th.  Try to do as much of it as you can, but if you can't get the ones marked "hard", don't fret too too much.

 

As we discussed in class and in email, there are a number of typos on Assignment #6.  I have put up a new version (accessible from the same link as above), which makes changes to the quantified variables of problems #6, #7; adds a scheme of abbreviation to #10; changes the meaning of the predicate O for the problems in Part IV.

 

The Final Exam is scheduled for Friday, December 14th at 3.30-6.30, in RCB 8100 [note this room number].  (Is this the last exam of the entire exam period???)  As with the midterm, it is an open book, open note exam, but you are not allowed any electronic devices.