PPE 101 - Nature of Reasoning

Institution:

University of Pennsylvania

Subject:

Description:

Sillari. This course aims to offer a historical overview about human reasoning, as well as to illustrate how logical reasoning can be treated in a rigorous way by formal means. In particular, we shall trace the attempts to provide an accountof correct reasoning from Aristotle and Euclid, to the work of Boole and Frege in the 19th century. We shall then focus on deductively correct reasoning: those circumstances in which the truth of a conclusion is guaranteed by the truth and correctness of the premises and reasoning adopted to reach it. Our goal is to distinguish valid and invalid arguments by purely formal means. As opposed to the analysis of deductive reasoning carried out in the first part of the course, in the second part we shall concentrate on inductive reasoning. We shall review the skeptic challenge to empirical knowledge, and examine some answers to such challenge. In this setting we shall consider the development of probability calculus and decision theory.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.upenn.edu

Phone Number:

(215) 898-5000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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