In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
Logic is the study of the methods and principles used to distinquish good from bad reasoning.
While no single course could provide a mastery of all that is necessary for this task, there is an area of fundamental importance to good reasoning that offers a natural beginning point for the study of logic, that of elementary deductive inference. Deductive inference lies at the heart of the reasoning process in a wide variety of applications, its methods and principles are thoroughly understood, and it lends itself nicely to mastery within the space of an academic term. Accordingly, this course will be devoted to a study of the structure of elementary deductive inference. The clarity and rigor of this study will provide not only a foundation for proper deductive reasoning, but as well a sense of the general nature of coherently structured reasoning, a sense that will prove a salutary guide in a wide variety of applications. Each of the exams will have a total of 100 points.