PHI 418—Non-Classical Logic

This course will investigate non-classical logics. Non-classical logics have historically been developed to model features of language or reasoning that are absent from classical propositional or first-order logic. Some of them are compatible with classical reasoning, while others are not. Students will also work on writing clear informal (natural language) proofs about logical systems, as well as proofs within them. Non-classical logics come in many flavors. Logics covered in this course may include: the Logic of Paradox, Relevance Logics, and the description logics that underwrite reasoning tools developed by the World Wide Web Consortium for the purpose of knowledge representation.