The immediate purpose of Philosophy 251-Elementary Symbolic Logic is to enable students to:

(1) Recognize arguments when they appear in various texts;
(2) Identify the premises and conclusions of these arguments;
(3) Translate these arguments into appropriate symbolic languages;
(4) Use various methods, such as truth tables, truth tress, countermodels, and derivations to determine the validity or the invalidity of these arguments;
(5) Recognize the benefits and limitations of each method.

The long range purpose of Philosophy 251-Elementary Symbolic Logic is to enable students to:

(6) More accurately assess the arguments read and heard in everyday life;
(7) Improve the quality of their own reasoning and arguing.

Students who achieve the immediate and long range purposes of Philosophy 251-Elementary Symbolic Logic satisfy the Symbolic Reasoning Field of Study requirement. In order to understand how achievement of the immediate and long range purposes satisfies the requirement, the complete text of the requirement follows.

As a field of study, symbolic reasoning is distinguished by its attention to internal logical consistency and by its wide external applicability. This field of study emphasizes symbolic problem solving, a process that includes translating problems into terms that can be treated within a symbolic system, understanding the rules by which the information relevant to the problem may be processed in order to obtain solutions, recognizing important principles governing the application of these rules, and judging both the appropriateness of known solution methods to a particular problem and the quality or reasonableness of the solution obtained.

Courses in this field of study aim to develop in students the skills to obtain valid solutions using one or more symbolic systems, the ingenuity to translate new problems into appropriate terms for such systems, and the persistence to carry a solution method through to completion. The focus of a symbolic reasoning requirement course should be on understanding the symbolic system and how it can be used to develop problem-solving tools rather than on the tools themselves. Applications of these tools, while a welcome addition, should not be the primary objective of the course.