I’ve been again tidying the first tranche of chapters of the second edition of my Introduction to Formal Logic. This time, in particular, I’ve removed some careless talk about ‘predicates’ which — as was rightly pointed out to me in a discussion of another post — just didn’t cohere with what I said more officially about predicates later. So here’s the latest version:
For new readers, as I’ve said here before, the headline news is that these really are introductory chapters (general scene-setting before we start work in earnest on formal propositional logic). 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!
NB If anyone wants to see more of the book in draft form, let me know at the email addrss given in the page headers for that first tranche of chapters. The treatment of propositional logic (explanation of syntax/semantics, truth tables, truth trees, motivation for material conditional etc. etc.) is ready for prime time, or at least ready for comments. The deal on your side is that if you do ask for more, that counts as an undertaking not to recirculate the chapters, and an undertaking to give me whatever comments/corrections you have. On my side the deal is that useful comments get your name in lights in the “Thanks” section at the beginning of the book!