PHIL120 Lecture Notes - Fall 2018 Lecture 2 - Justin Trudeau, First-order logic, Formal language
20 Sep 2018
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Document Summary
Logic is less about synthesis and more about discovery. It"s an investigation of those a priori truths that are constant no matter the context. The laws of logic rely on the form of an argument. This form involves a set of premises that lead to a given conclusion. If it is raining, then the ground is wet. This argument could be reduced to only that which is logically relevant, and it would look as such: The examples given use what is known as formal language . Formal language has a defined set of characters which are used, and has rules for how those characters may be arranged. Let"s take a look at one of these symbols. P r = if p, then r. First order logic deals with the veracity of statements, but not their possibility. Translating statements into first order logic cuts away at the language, allowing us to note some of the subtleties of a statement.
