Philosophy:Intro to Logic

emmjayy, BSN, RN · May 27, 2015

I took two semesters of logic in high school, and performed critical thinking assignments throughout elementary school and junior high. I highly, highly recommend taking a logic course to anyone, it will help you no matter what area of work you go into. I'm not a nursing student (yet!) but I've been checking out NCLEX style questions and the rationale for their answers as a way to get my brain in gear for nursing school and the reasoning - not necessarily the content, but the reasoning - behind the questions/correct answers has been very familiar and easy for me to understand. I definitely chalk that up to the logic and critical thinking exercises I performed over and over again throughout my pre-college years.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · May 27, 2015

OH, I wish this were a requirement for every nursing student. Do it. You will never regret its beneficial effect on your ability to think like a nurse.

llg, PhD, RN · May 27, 2015

I agree with GrnTea -- and wish logic were a requirement for every nursing student. Give me a choice between hiring someone who is a wiz at A&P but cannot think logically ... a nurse with a good grounding in critical thinking and logic, but who got C's in A&P ... and I'll hire the logical person any day.

How difficult will be will depend on the particular course you take and the professor. Any particular subject matter can be in an easy course or a hard one, depending on how it is taught. You'll have to talk with people who have taken that exact same class at the the exact same school with the exact same teacher to get a good sense of that.

HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD · May 27, 2015

Ditto! Any course that builds your meta-cognition (thinking about thinking) skills is very valuable.

ThatOneDude822 · May 28, 2015

I took logic this past fall along with Anatomy and Ethical Philosophy. It's a pretty easy class from my experience, but you have to be able to think very abstractly. There were people who did really well, and people who did pretty bad; very few people were in between.

If it's anything like the course I took, it's a lot of analyzing arguments and breaking them apart, putting them into logical form and then analyzing the pattern and determining if it is valid and cogent.

So a very simple example would be something like:

1. If I am in San francisco, then I am in California

2. If I am in California, then I am in the United States

âˆ´ If am in San Francisco, then I am in the United States

Then you would have to convert that to logical form:

A= I am in San Francisco

B= I am in California

C= I am in the United States

1. If A, then B

2. If B, then C

âˆ´If A, then C

Finally, you would have to determine if that is an acceptable pattern or not (it is).

Obviously there's a bit more to it than that, but that's the general idea that you'll be building off of (if it's anything like my school's logic class).

euisme, BSN · May 28, 2015

Nursing school is so impacted in my area, that I would absolutely take my time if you can afford the time to, especially since you only need it for BSN and have yet to get into it. I took anatomy and physiology separately at my university and anatomy was an easier A because the lab was memorization and I had control to make that close to 100%. Physiology on the other hand is more complex in concepts so I'm not sure since I'll be taking it this summer, but have been sitting in the lectures and my anatomy lab partners aren't doing as well as they did in anatomy.

i thought logic was interesting and fun, but I ended up with a B when I took it 14 years ago. I can't remember if that was due to class load or immaturity.

Anyway, I'd focus on keeping a high GPA so you can take those BSN classes after you've passed major sciences :)