Logic < University of California, Berkeley

This is an archived copy of the 2016-17 guide. To access the most recent version of the guide, please visit http://guide.berkeley.edu.

About the Program

Logical reasoning is essential in most areas of human inquiry. The discipline of Logic treats logical reasoning itself as an object of study. Logic has been one of the main branches of philosophy since Aristotle; it revolutionized the foundations of mathematics in the 20th century; and it has been called “the calculus of computer science,” with applications in many areas. Logic has also played an important role in the investigation of language and the mind, as the basis for formal semantics in linguistics and automated reasoning in artificial intelligence. With these interdisciplinary connections, Logic serves as a bridge between the humanities and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. Studying logic enhances students’ abilities to reason and argue rigorously, to read and write analytically, to discern patterns amidst complexity, and to understand abstract structures. The Logic Minor, offered though the Philosophy Department at Berkeley, consists of three core courses in symbolic logic, which may be pursued in parallel tracks within Philosophy or Mathematics, plus a choice of three upper division electives from an array of courses across Philosophy, Mathematics, Linguistics, and Computer Science. This minor is currently open to undergraduate students in the College of Letters & Science.

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Minor Requirements

The Logic Minor at Berkeley consists of three core courses in symbolic logic, which may be pursued in parallel tracks within Philosophy or Mathematics, plus a choice of three upper division electives from a list of courses across Philosophy, Mathematics, Linguistics, and Computer Science.

Course Requirements for Logic Minors

Course List
Code	Title	Units
Introductory
PHILOS 12A	Introduction to Logic ¹	4
or MATH 55	Discrete Mathematics
Mathematical Logic
PHILOS 140A	Intermediate Logic ²	4
or MATH 125A	Mathematical Logic
Computability and Logic
PHILOS 140B	Intermediate Logic ²	4
or MATH 136	Incompleteness and Undecidability
Electives: Choose Three		10-12
At least two of these electives must be at the undergraduate level (unless an exception is granted by petition to the Logic Minor Committee). Note also that undergraduate enrollment in graduate seminars requires the consent of the instructor.

COMPSCI 172	Computability and Complexity
LINGUIS 121	Logical Semantics ³
LINGUIS 221	Advanced Logical Semantics
MATH 135	Introduction to the Theory of Sets
MATH 225A & MATH 225B	Metamathematics and Metamathematics
MATH 227A	Theory of Recursive Functions
MATH 229	Theory of Models
MATH 235A	Theory of Sets
MATH 236	Metamathematics of Set Theory
PHILOS 134	Form and Meaning
PHILOS 142	Philosophical Logic
PHILOS 143	Modal Logic
PHILOS 146	Philosophy of Mathematics
PHILOS 149	Special Topics in Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics
PHILOS 290	Seminar ⁴
Students may optionally fulfill (at most) one of their electives with a course on related formal methods and reasoning, or other courses approved by petition: PHILOS 141, PHILOS 148 & COMPSCI 188.

¹	Students who wish to count a different course as “equivalent” to PHILOS 12A or MATH 55 must submit a petition to the Logic Minor Committee.
²	MATH 125A and MATH 136 may have additional prerequisites, determined by the instructor.
³	LINGUIS 121 requires LINGUIS 120 Introduction to Syntax and Semantics as a prerequisite.
⁴	The Logic Minor Committee will decide which instances of PHILOS 290 count as “Graduate Seminars in Logic” for the Logic Minor.

Faculty and Instructors

+ Indicates this faculty member is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Faculty

Lara Buchak, Associate Professor. Game theory, decision theory, epistemology, philosophy of religion.
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Wesley H. Holliday, Assistant Professor. Philosophy, logic, epistemology, Epistemic Logic, Modal Logic.
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John Macfarlane, Professor. Ancient philosophy, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, epistemology.
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Paolo Mancosu, Professor. Philosophy, philosophy of mathematics and its history, philosophy of logic, mathematical logic.
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Antonio Montalban, Associate Professor. Mathematical logic.
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George Necula, Assistant Professor. Software engineering, programming systemsm, security, program analysis.
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Christos H. Papadimitriou, Professor. Economics, evolution., algorithms, game theory, networks, optimization, complexity.
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Stuart Russell, Professor. Artificial intelligence, computational biology, algorithms, machine learning, real-time decision-making, probabilistic reasoning.
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Thomas Scanlon, Professor. Mathematics, model theory, applications to number theory.
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Sanjit Seshia, Associate Professor. Electronic design automation, theory, computer security, program analysis, dependable computing, computational logic, formal methods.
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Theodore A. Slaman, Professor. Mathematics, recursion theory.
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Hans Sluga, Professor. Political philosophy, recent European philosophy, history of analytic philosophy, Frege, Wittgenstein, Foucault.
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John Steel, Professor. Mathematics, descriptive set theory, set theory, fine structure.
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Umesh Vazirani, Professor. Quantum computation, hamiltonian complexity, analysis of algorithms.
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Seth Yalcin, Associate Professor. Philosophy of language, logic, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, semantics, metaphysics.
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Emeritus Faculty

John W. Addison, Professor Emeritus. Mathematics, theory of definability, descriptive set theory, model theory, recursive function theory.
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Robert Anderson, Professor Emeritus. Finance, probability theory, mathematical economics, nonstandard analysis.
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Charles S. Chihara, Professor Emeritus.

Alan D. Code, Professor Emeritus.

William Craig, Professor Emeritus.

Leo A. Harrington, Professor Emeritus. Mathematics, model theory, recursion theory, set theory.
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+ Richard Karp, Professor Emeritus. Computational molecular biology, genomics, DNA molecules, structure of genetic regulatory networks, combinatorial and statsitical methods.
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Paul Kay, Professor Emeritus. Linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, pragmatics, syntax, semantics, lexicon, grammar, color naming, lexical semantics, grammatical variation, cross-language color naming, the encoding of contextual relations in rules of grammar.
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Ralph N. McKenzie, Professor Emeritus. Mathematics, logic, universal algebra, general algebra, lattice theory.
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Jack H. Silver, Professor Emeritus.

W. Hugh Woodin, Professor Emeritus. Mathematics, set theory, large cardinals.
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Lotfi A. Zadeh, Professor Emeritus. Artificial intelligence, linguistics, control theory, logic, fuzzy sets, decision analysis, expert systems neural networks, soft computing, computing with words, computational theory of perceptions and precisiated natural language.
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