Philosophy 2250 Lecture Notes - False Premise, Soundness, Bob Rae

• School: Western University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: Philosophy 2250
• Professor: Lorne Falkenstein

Document Summary

This is a course in basic formal logic. Formal logic is the study of an argument"s form. When we reason we argue from a collection of known things: the premise of our argument. To conclude to another thing that is not so well known. The forms arguments take can be good or bad. Ex: good: i have five toes on my left foot. The left and right sides of animals are generally approximate reflections of one another. I have five toes on my right foot. Ex: bad: i have five toes on my left foot. Different arguments can follow a common form or pattern: A, b, and c are a"s. d is like a, b, and b. d is an a. Good argument forms are of two kinds: deductive, inductive. We are concerned with deductively good arguments in this course: inductively good argument forms establish the likelihood of the truth of the conclusion.