General | What to buy | Preparation | Topic 1 | Topic 2 | Topic 3 | Topic 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Marking Code | Model Answers
You will be taught in classes this term. Each week there will be:
a UNIVERSITY LECTURE in Schools on Mondays at noon, which you are required to attend until further notice;
an INPUT class, which all attend, on Mondays, 5 - 7 in Lecture Room 23;
a SURGERY (voluntary) for those needing help with their work for the week, Wednesdays 9 - 10 in Lecture Room 23;
a DEBRIEFING class on Fridays, either 2-4 or 4.30 - 6.30, which will be likewise in Lecture Room 23.
It is vital that your weekly work is in by the deadline, 9am Friday morning. Marking it is an immense task, and it will help your tutors if some work can come in beforehand, but everybody's work MUST be in the appropriate pigeonholes by the deadline.
The Philosophy Faculty offers various resources on logic. You should visit their pages.
Logic, by Wilfrid Hodges, second edition, Penguin 2001..
You will also need to have some idea of language works, English in particular. Buy
Some students find a pamphlet issued by the Philosophy Faculty useful. You may find it useful too. But we do not insist that you buy a copy:
And anyone who has yet to purchase a philosophical dictionary, indispensable item of scholar's equipment, should do so NOW. There are many on the market. We recommend
Hodges: §§ 1 - 8, 12 - 15
Pinker: As much as you can , but at least chapters 1, 4, 5.
That you grasp the basic vocabulary of English Grammar, either from Pinker, or with the aid of The Internet Grammar of English
The ten sentences below. Each is ambiguous, some of them multiply so. Try to spot all the different interpretations of them, and think about how to classify them.
[1] Manson drove Sharon to the bank
[2] The Thompson twins can fish
[3] Ponting drives wide of mid-off
[4] We must have the worst JCR food in Oxford
[5] Bush is dangerous and mad or just plain stupid
[6] Sally's cousin is engaged to her former husband
[7] Zebedee only reads books in libraries
[8] Everyone in Balliol is dreaming about someone in Wadham
[9] Florence wants to marry a Norwegian
[10] Dougal is looking for a doughnut
As for Preparation above , but you may also find the Lecture notes useful. Try to finish off the Pinker, and if there is any time left over, continue with Hodges.
Here it is.
Preparation for ClassRevise your University lecture notes from Week 1 on Validity, and read Hodges §§ 9-11
Here are two documents you may find useful
Classical Entailment and Validity
Work for Week 2
Here you go.
None
Download a sheet of blank truth-tables. Take as many copies as you need. Which is probably a lot, given that you will need plenty of practice. Your task this week is to make yourself utterly familiar with truth-tables and tableaux. In following weeks we shall presuppose a firm grasp of both techniques. Likewise download a sheet of tableaux to practise on. You are to hand in the first ten from each section, so we can check on your progress, but you should practice them until the technique is automatic.
And your weekly exercises are here.
Read, and think about, Hodges on §18.
Here it is. I will email slides around once I have checked how to do it.
Read, and think about, Hodges §§34 - 6 .
From now on we shall presuppose that you are familiar with the whole of Hodges. So if you have not yet read the book, do so this week. And that doesn't mean just read: it means familiarize yourself with the material. But your work this week has a precise aim: you should seek to fix certain skills. So read anything else that helps. The Philosophy Faculty website offers various resources. The Slocombe volume may be helpful.
Here is some from me. And here is some from Ofra. And here is a handout concerning Monday's class.
Nothing special, unless you have not yet finished working your way through Hodges, perhaps with the aid of the Slocombe volume. In this class, we shall presuppose that you have done so.
As above.
Here it is.
Here we occasionally publish weekly work, handed in by students, which is so good that it serves as a model for everyone. We are grateful to the students concerned for graciously allowing us to make their work available to a wider audience.
So far we have one such piece. We are grateful to Eleanor and Simon for permission to reproduce their excellent answers to Week 3's exercises on validity. Here you go.
Here you will find avuncular advice on various matters. So far there are no pages, but that's because nobody has emailed me with a request.
If you have got this far , you are entitled to a philosophical treat. Here it is: Raphael's School of Athens, with Plato and Aristotle centre stage:
