[Updated file, linking to revised document, brought to front of the blog] After a hiatus, it’s back to work on the second edition of my Introduction to Formal Logic. I’ve been tidying and improving the first tranche of chapters — so here they are again (with an embarrassing number of corrections kindly provided by Scott Weller).
IFL2, Chapters 1 to 7 [link now removed]
The headline news is that these really are introductory chapters (general scene-setting before we start work in earnest on propositional logic in Chapter 9). So I introduce ideas like: validity, deduction vs induction, showing validity by ‘proofs’, showing invalidity by ‘counterexamples’. I also briefly discuss logical validity in a narrow sense vs deductive validity more generally. A quick look at the Table of Contents should give you a better idea of what these chapters are about.
Hopefully, the presentation is accessible and reasonably user-friendly without talking down to the reader. So this first part of IFL2 should be of interest and of use to any philosophy student about to start a logic course this next term/semester (indeed, they should be of use to any beginning philosopher). Do please spread the word, and do point prospective students to the link!
I’ll leave these chapters online, freely available, for the some weeks. In the meantime, all further comments/corrections as always most gratefully received!