CMSI 261: Language and Thought
Preparation for the Midterm
To be held Tuesday, March 13, 2012.
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The exam will cover material from

  * GEB Chapters 1-7 and
  * The entire book by Graham Priest

Because it is an exam, you will not have a lot of time for writing essays.  So expect
problems in which you "work things out" and give short answers.

The test is open everything EXCEPT (1) other students and their exam papers and (2) sources
that you can ask questions of.  That means you can use "static pages" on the web, but you
cannot solicit answers via chat, Facebook, online Q & A sites and forums, or live people.
Also, any kind of collaboration will get you into serious trouble.  It's a test.

You can prepare by skimming the notes and working on those practice problems in the
range 1-54 except those that require programming and the computation of fractal
dimension (and any other problem that *obviously* is way outside the scope of the class).

If you have any questions as to whether a particular practice problem is fair game,
just ask.

There will be 11 questions, form which you can pick any 10.  The questions will involve:

* I-mode versus M-mode
* Undecidability
* Characterizing a formal system and showing derivations
* Understanding where "meaning" comes from
* Finding a ground for a given figure
* Recursion in language
* Identifying self-similar copies in recursive structures
* Discovering frame, outer, and inner messages
* Translating English sentences into logical notation
* The GEB dialogue Chromatic Fantasy and Feud
* Derivation of theorems in the Propositional Calculus