Your homeschooler needs a FUN high school logic course from Dr. Micah Tillman!
FUN High School Logic Course from Dr. Micah Tillman
Homeschool high schoolers are smart. They need to develop critical thinking skills so that they can learn wisely about the world around them. A great way to do this is with Logic.
What if your homeschool high schooler could take a FUN Symbolic Logic Course from Dr. Micah Tillman (the author of 7Sister’s courses: Philosophy in 4 Questions and History and Philosophy of the Western World)?
Dr. Tillman (a homeschool graduate) had been teaching Symbolic Logic to his college students but got frustrated with the boring, stodgy curriculum. So he decided to gamify it.
He developed Chambergon Battle Logic!
Then he decided to share the course (syllabus, textbook, user guide, and games) for FREE so that everyone can enjoy Symbolic Logic.
“This is what the characters in the game look like. Aren’t they cute?”Now, even if your homeschool high schoolers aren’t ready for Symbolic Logic yet, You really MUST read this excerpt from the syllabus to get a feel for the good humor of the course:
This course is about a discovery the mathematician George Boole made in the mid-1800s. His discovery was that you can do math with meanings, not just with numbers. You can add numbers, multiply them, divide them, and so on, of course. But Boole discovered you can also add meanings, multiply them, divide them, and so on. While in normal math you work with numerical values, in Boole’s meaning-math you work with “truth values.”
But why should we care about Boole’s discovery? The reason is that without Google searches, we’d actually have to memorize things. We wouldn’t just be able to look everything up online.
But what’s that got to do with Boole? Well, Google searches only work because Boole (and the people who followed him) worked out the mathematics of meanings. Without Boole’s discovery, in fact, computers as we know them wouldn’t exist. A machine that can only do numerical math is just a calculator. If you want a computer, you need a machine that can do semantic math—math with meanings. You need a symbolic logic machine.
This is what Chambergons look like. Get it? They’re polyGONs, each containing two CHAMBERs. Get it?You: But if computers are symbolic logic machines, why do we have to spend a whole semester doing symbolic logic?
Me: Well, why did you have to learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, when your calculator could do it for you?
You: Because the system is broken. Stupid school. I hate everything.
Me: But if you want to program computers, if you want to work with databases for libraries or bidnisses, if you want to do some types of linguistics, or if you want to be a(n Analytic) philosopher, you’ve got
to know how to do symbolic logic for yourself.
You: But I don’t want to be or do anything of those things.
Me: I know. The content of symbolic logic courses will do 99% of you no good. Learning the content will; it’s a fantastic brain workout. But most students hate symbolic logic for the same reason they hate math, and they hate math for the same reason they hate exercise.
These are cards in the game. Believe it or not, they form what logicians call a “proof.”After teaching symbolic logic twice “the normal way,” therefore, I decided something needed to change. Symbolic logic is a puzzle-solving game, but most people never realize it. To help them see the light, I created the “Chambergon Battle Logic” system (oooo! aaaaa! marvel!). It is isomorphic with symbolic logic—it has the same structure and rules, so everything you do in one system can be translated directly into the other. However, since it translates the rules of logic into visual and motivational forms, even people who hate “quantitative reasoning” can play it. You’ll be learning and doing symbolic logic without the pain and suffering every other student in every other symbolic logic course across the world is going through.
Chambergon Battle Logic is a kind of cross between mazes, deck-building card games, and role-playing board games. You are given starting cards and a destination, and earn points by playing the right cards to reach your destination. By earning points, you level up—acquiring new powers that allow you to solve new puzzles. The level you reach by the end of the semester will be the primary factor in determining your grade for the course.
If you arrange the game’s Characters in a circle, they form a pretty color wheel, which is pretty.COURSE TOPICS
1. The Operators (or “Connectives”) of Symbolic Logic: What they are, how they interrelate, and how they differ from non-logical operators/connectives.
2. The Rules of Symbolic Logic: What they are, how they interrelate, and how they may be mirrored in what are normally thought of as non-logical or non-rational rules.
3. The Mereology of Meaning and the Transmission of Truth: Those may be the coolest eight words I have ever written. We’ll talk about what they mean as the semester proceeds. (Mystery! Oooo! Aaaaa!)
The FREE zip file contains the Chambergon Battle Logic course that Dr. Tillman teaches to college students. You will receive in the zip file:
- Course Syllabus
- Course Textbook: Chambergon Battle Logic, An Introduction to Symbolic Logic (only more gamey) by Dr. Micah Tillman
- Chambergon Battle Logic Users Manual
- Chambergon Battle game with 355 puzzles that are fun (and adorable)
Don’t miss the opportunity to develop great thinking skills in your homeschool high schooler with Chambergon Battle Logic course AND download Philosophy in 4 Questions for fun Philosophy as well.
Interested in Christian Apologetics for your student? Check out this post introducing Good Answers Ministries. These FREE resources are available from 7SistersHomeschool.com.
BLOGIC is a free, interactive course in symbolic logic. It includes an interactive online textbook and, for those who register, graded quizzes. The textbook covers the standard syllabus in logic taught by most American philosophy departments, including:
Symbolizing arguments
Truth tables
Natural deduction for propositional logic
Models for predicate logic
Natural deduction for predicate logic
In addition to these standard topics, the textbook also includes:
The logic of Boolean searching
An introduction to logic circuits, with interactive working models
An introduction to computability, with a working, programmable Turing Machine
An introduction to modal logic, with possible-worlds diagrams
J. David Velleman
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, New York University
Research Professor of Philosophy, Johns Hopkin
The URL is: learn-logic.org