Philosophy 152, Rational Decisions. This is a course on making decisions in a rational way. We will discuss mistakes commonly made in the kinds of decisions mentioned above. And we will discuss rules for making those decisions using probabilities, utilities, and reasoning about conditionals. Philosophy 153, Mathematical Logic.
Logic is the study of arguments.
We will translate arguments into a symbolic language and formulate rules for the symbolic arguments. This procedure is adopted because translation into the symbolic language reveals logical structure, and because the rules for arguments in the symbolic language are simpler and more precise than the rules for arguments in natural languages. The goal of the course is to develop skill in recognizing the logical structure of arguments, and skill in constructing derivations for valid arguments. A derivation shows how the conclusion of a valid argument can be obtained from the premisses in a series of steps conforming to the rules of a derivational system. The rules of a derivational system are formulated with mathematical precision and reliance on them makes logic mathematical.