PHIL 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Formal System, Deductive Reasoning

• School: Simon Fraser University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 110
• Professor: Jill Mc Intosh

Document Summary

Dr mc"s philosophy 110 (1171) part notes, week 2#1 . One in which it is not possible for all the premises to be true yet the conclusion false. Validity is a matter not of the content of an argument, but of its formal, structural pattern. We abstract away the content so that we deal only with the form. Dr. mc is a professor or dr mc is human. Mc is a professor , let q stand for dr. All arguments that have that same pattern are valid. No, it can tell us only about formal properties, not truth value. Exception: logic can tell which statements are logically true or false. Dr. mc is a baboon and dr. mc is not a baboon. P and it is the case that not p. A useful symbol: ~ tilde =it is not the case that.