Summer Quarter, and the final exams that come with it, is finally over.
The results are in and I made Epic Fail on the Math final, getting a 71.88%. However, because I can read both calendars and clocks and did well throughout the quarter, I’ll have a 93% score for the class.
Fall Quarter has me moving on to Calculus. I’m trying to get excited about this, but finding the proper enthusiasm to dredge some “care” out of “Give-A-Damn Bay” is not in my drop-down menu right now. And I don’t see it in my future since I’ve been reading the Amazon reviews on the $135 textbook I have to buy for the class.
(I used to work in the book wholesale world and I know how much it costs them to print and bind books of this size. Let’s just say that a latte is more expensive. I’ll be having a post on the Higher Education Racket in the next day or so.
My employer only reimburses me for classes if I get an 80% or better and I thought that I would end up having to deal without reimbursement for my Philosophy 106 class because of my horrid performance there. But, in true classic American underdog style, I studied my ass off and aced the last quiz and got a 95% on the final. I should end up with an 84.51% for the course and not have worries on the money front because of this particular class.
On a side note, the last quiz was actually given the day AFTER the final. I guess this is because the list of courses a person has to take to get a PhD in Philosophy and a Masters in Education so that they can teach Philosophy does not include one on “Time Management and Organization”.
Philosophy 106 – “Introduction to Logic” is a very strange course. I would not recommend taking this course unless you need your GPA lowered (more on why you would need this in another essay). This is normally a 12 week lecture class. This quarter, it was offered online only. Also, since it was Summer Quarter, it was only 8 weeks long. Do you now see the problem? It teaches you to, essentially, turn English into Algebra. Phrases are studied, broken down, symbolized and then tested for truth. It doesn’t really matter what you are saying so much as how you say it.
It would be great if you believe you can get a job fact checking Noam Chomsky for FOX. But I otherwise cannot foresee a rational use for it. More on this in a moment.
~, =, >, &, v, are all operational symbols in “Truth Functional Language”. They represent Not, Only If, If Then, And, Or, respectively. Names of people and items and their actions/inactions get symbolized by the first letter in their name.
For instance, “Ann and Bob are not both home.” would be symbolized as “~(A&B)”, and “Ann and Bob are both not home”, which means something different, is symbolized as “~A & ~B”.
And then once you get all that down, they introduce you to Quantitative Language. This drops some extra symbols on your head which changes some of the old symbol’s usages. (x) symbolizes “everything or everyone in the known universe”, whereas (3x) symbolizes “at least one”.
An example would be “All persons have rights”. To begin symbolizing that sentence, one would write this out: “(x)(Px > Rx)”. That essentially states “Everyone in the known universe, if they are a person, then they have rights.” However, to write it correctly in QL, you would just write as “(x)(Rx)”.
I hinted about a minor insurrection in this class last week. Now that the class is over, here is the whine.
After the final one of the students went into the online discussion forum and posted a “Why in Hell is this a required class?” post.
Hi Class,
Now that it’s near the end of the class, just wondering if anyone else feels the same way as I do that it seems ridiculous for this class (or even Math 107 which is even worse) being a requirement to earning an AA degree. I just don’t see where we apply what we’ve learned in this class to our everday lives. For example, I don’t generally go about pointing out another person’s argument is invalid by busting out a Truth Table or Proof when we’re discussing things such as politics (and boy would I love to see the election cadidates whipping out a Truth Table everytime the opposing party claims something that is clearly an invalid argument, not to mention pointing out which kind of argument it is, and so on…). Also, I certainly won’t be applying any of the rules learned to my novel writing or even scriptwriting, unless of course the main character happens to be a Mathematician being held hostage by the some secret government organization known as the Truth-seekers and needs to find a way out by using only the Truth-functional Ineference Rules he was taught in college (lol). To me it seems like some proof-happy guy or gal sat down and decided one day that college students need to understand this in order to be successful or even productive members of society, simply because they are all about the truth (in other words die-hard Truth-seeksers) and must spend their lives proving everything to be right (or wrong or valid/invalid, however you want to put it) rather than simply enjoying the world we live in and the people we share it with for the beautiful amazing gift that it is instead.
I could go on and on, but I spare y’all. The only point I’m trying to make with all this is that it feels so unfair to need this course for graduation (unless for those studying to become Mathematicians or teachers) with material that is very difficult for most to grasp (even my Math tutor struggled through it with me) which unfortunately can adversely affect our overall GPAs (where scholarships are on the line) when we do not do well learning something we have no real use for in our academic lives and beyond–there are other ways to develop one’s problem-solving skills that don’t require memorizing unnecessary rules and such. It’s just not how our world functions naturally and is why Symbolic Logic is considered an artificial language and not a natural one.
Lastly, I want to make sure my comments are taken correctly and were never intended as an attack on our instructor or the class itself. I applaud Mr Pardi for doing an outstanding job of tackling such a difficult subject. Thank You Paul for sharing your wealth of knowledge with us in a way that made learning fun despite the material’s often frustrating nature. And Thank You classmates for all your help from the discussions, good luck to you on all your finals. 🙂
All the best,
M
That is from a 20 year old who hopes to become a professional writer. If you’re weeping now, stop. I don’t want you to start bawling when I remind you that you paid for her education.
Anyway, there were more than a few responses in the same vein. Including this winner:
No – you are NOT the only one who wanted to rip their hair out over this and whose eyeballs started bleeding while reading the text. My beautiful GPA will be hurt by this class which I know I failed (by the way – the FIRST class in my life that I have ever failed… and I’m not 18! I have a business degree already)
I would not recommend anyone taking this class online – this is definitely a class that needs hands on w/ the teacher present to ask questions of immediately.
For the first time in my life, I put my name on my final, looked at it, realized I was TOTALLY screwed and then handed it in – NO ANSWERS!!! I’ve never not tried in my whole life. Logic has triumphed over me and I stand defeated! One more quiz so that I can keep my VA benefits… I don’t think I will ever attempt this class again.
First, if you’re thinking hiring a male in his mid-20’s male for his business degree, maybe you should ask me for this dude’s name. Secondly, my 3.95 GPA took a swift kick in the nuts from this course, but I not only busted my ass studying as soon as my future grade became apparent and I took the final to the best of my ability.
In short, Summer Quarter sucked hard, but it is over now.
Over the next week or so you may find me posting a bunch of old stuff from links I found by didn’t have the time to post on. Hope you enjoy. Have a good next four weeks or so.
I find khanacademy.org very helpful in the math department.
Good luck, get a Ti89 or 92, and enjoy Calculus!
Ouch! Sucks bad I know.
I had to explain to my then 19 y.o that if you looked at it from the the schools side of things it makes perfect sense. The class is totally worthless unless you are looking for revenue. Pure and simple, it’s a hard class and people will drop/fail and have to take it again. Worth to you, the student, is irrelavant. The term they use here is “puff”.
btw-I use Chegg.com to rent the books that I don’t want to keep. Usually about 1/3 the cost of buying.
You know something, just because you currently think it’s useless doesn’t make it so. I absolutely loved my introduction to logic class. Most of my friends that took it with me enjoyed it too. Amazingly though I had a professor (at UW) which used the class to show how our politicians twist language to pull a fast one on those who haven’t a clue. How the courts and legislators invest themselves with new powers not previously allowed. I was very surprised to see someone like him at UW.
As for the two dumb kids you used as examples, the business major just makes me laugh. The running joke is when you fail out of engineering you go to business school. You may not fully diagram every sentence, but it does make a difference when someone hands you a legal document to read. You start pulling out little details you probably would have never otherwise noticed.
My class was tough, but it wasn’t a GPA killer. My physics, calculus, and chemistry did that. I looked at classes like this as a break.
What I think those kids are really upset about is it was a class where things weren’t just handed to them. Oh my god, you had to work for a grade, dear lord the world is ending! I had some classes that I had a beef with, this class was NOT one of them.
For the people wondering what use the introduction to logic classes serve, think computer science. Basic programming needs a basic understanding of this sort of logic (and basic programming courses provide it); taking courses on the philosophy side will improve those skills significantly. I know I’ve benefited from similar courses while writing software.
I’ve even been faced more than once with the requirement to take an existing and rather complex algorithm, specified in normal english, written by someone with no programming knowledge, and turn that into software. An understanding of formal logic without the trappings of code allows you to transform your initial english document into an intermediate, more precisely specified formal-logic format, which helps identify gaps in the specified algorithm and is much easier to work with than trying to go straight into code. Especially if you have to try to communicate with the original author and explain the problems with his algorithm.
The above applies even more so to anyone interested in artificial intelligence. There’s a whole subcategory of AI research involving logical proof generators — programs that can take a set of logical inputs in something vaguely resembling plain english, and use those inputs to validate the truth value of a new statement, or even generate new known-true statements.
So yes, Virginia, you do use this stuff in the real world.
I’ve TA’d logic courses before, and I will readily admit that they’re tough. I will say, however, that they’re also one of the most valuable classes a person can take. A huge majority of people in the world are hindered by the fact that their thinking is sloppy, imprecise, and illogical.
Logic is a way to ensure that the truth of conclusions follows from the truth of premises. Without logic, one has NO GUARANTEES about the truth of one’s argument. At all. Either way. Without logic, one’s arguments are as likely to lead one to falsehood as to truth.
I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but people need to understand that the things we think and say do matter. I sincerely hope you left a message in defense of the purpose of the course.
(That being said, starting with formal symbolic logic would NOT have been the way I’d have run an intro to logic course.)