Comment by throw4847285

In college I took Formal Logic II as it fulfilled requirements in both my Comp Sci and Phil major. It turned out that PHIL 104 was cross listed as MATH 562, because the professor who taught Logic I was allowed to teach whatever he wanted for the followup class. I had technically taken the prereq, which was a basic CS logic course, but I was in way over my head. It was one of the most fun courses I took in college.

We were given the exact text of the final exam weeks in advance, and were allowed to do anything at all to prepare, including collaborating with the other students or asking other professors (who couldn't make heads or tails of it). The goal was to be able to answer 1 or 2 out of the 10 questions on the exam, and even if you couldn't you got a B+ at minimum.

I wish I had a better memory, but I believe one of the questions I successfully answered was to prove Post's Theorem using Turing machines? The problem is, I never used the knowledge from that class again, but to this day I still think about it. It would be amazing to go back and learn more about that fascinating intersection of philosophy and computer science.

What I loved the most was that it combined hard math with the kind of esoteric metaphysical questions about mathematics which many practitioners despise because they feel like it undermines their work. It turns out, when you go that deep it's impossible not to touch on the headier stuff.