Logic (CLA113)

Course Description
The Distance Learning Logic course strengthens the student’s critical thinking and writing skills. Through a combination of weekly readings and online lectures, students are introduced to essential concepts in critical analysis and logic. They learn to distinguish between deductive and inductive arguments, develop techniques for analyzing and evaluating arguments, identify common rhetorical devices, and use basic logical concepts and the rules of deduction. Students wrestle with moral, legal, and aesthetic reasoning, while also critically examining the epistemological arguments related to Skepticism, Foundationalism, and the Reason versus Faith debate. Weekly homework assignments challenge students to demonstrate proficiency in such skills as argument analysis, recognizing/evaluating rhetorical devices, categorical logic, symbolic logic, and the writing of critical essays. Students will participate frequently in classwide Discussion Forums. Students’ progress will be measured by means of weekly homework submissions, a midterm and final examination, and one synthesis paper where the student critically examines Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy(1641).

Course Objective
This course instructs students in the fundamentals of logic. Students will learn basic logical concepts and common argumentative forms by applying a system of clarifying and evaluating arguments. The goal of the course is for each student to know the merits of good arguments (true premises, good logic, clarity, and conversational relevance), to recognize their presence or absence in argumentative discourse, and to exhibit them in his own writing.

This course promotes the learning objectives for the Classical Liberal Arts Core Curriculum by requiring students to enhance reading and writing skills, refine critical thinking skills, and apply the Judeo-Christian worldview to the study of the liberal arts.