01:830:305 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: George Boole, Propositional Calculus, Deductive Reasoning

• School: Rutgers University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: 01:830:305
• Professor: Professor Feldman

Document Summary

Standard procedures that work because of their form, not their content. Thought can be standardized into a mechanical process. Mental processes can be understood as mechanical processes. Ai is the flip side of mechanical computational processes of the brain. Had a lot of influence on mind. Syllogism: a chain of deductive reasoning: deductive: conclusion follows logically from premise, premise- all men are mortal, premise- socrates is a man, conclusion- socrates is mortal. The truth of the conclusion is logically certain based on the form of the argument, regardless of the content: need to believe to the premise to believe to conclusion. Propositions are statements that are true or false. This leads to a way of calculating with ideas instead of with numbers, called propositional calculus or boolean algebra. Method of finding propositions leading to new propositions. B= all men are mortal: we put props together with logical connectives: A ^ b: conjunction a is true and b is true.