BAEcon Economics

The course unit will cover the syntax and semantics of propositional logic (PL). Next a natural deduction system will be introduced for proving the validity of sequents and theorems in PL. Subsequently the course will extend the grammar and proof procedure developed for PL to encompass a language of first-order predicate logic with identity (QL).

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to the elements of a formal propositional and first-order predicate logic;
• Introduce two systems of logic and provide a proof-procedure for each.

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and construct well formed formulas of PL and QL by implementing rules of generative grammar;
• Prove sequents/theorems of PL and QL;
• Translate English sentences, including with definite descriptions, into QL.

Students should be able to:

• Understand the basic idea of a proof-theoretic approach to formal logic;
• Reflect on and analyse the relationship between natural and formal languages;
• Prove theorems in PL and QL;
• Identify logical structures in natural language constructions.

Students should be able to:

• Apply and clearly communicate formal, abstract reasoning.

Exam (6 hours) 33%

Exam (2 hours) 67%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• R.L. Simpson, Essentials of Symbolic Logic, Broadview Press, 2008.