What is the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition? How do the premises relate to the conclusion in a logically strong deductive argument? What about in a logically strong inductive argument?

Fundamentals

Short Answer (1-2 sentences)

1. What is the difference between a necessary and a sufficient condition?
2. How do the premises relate to the conclusion in a logically strong deductive argument? What about in a logically strong inductive argument?
3. What is the difference between referential and grammatical ambiguity?

True/False

4. If a logically strong deductive argument has true premises, then it must have a true conclusion.

5. If a logically strong inductive argument has true premises, then it must have a true conclusion.

8. All logically strong deductive arguments have both true premises and a true conclusion.
9. A logically weak argument can have both true premises and a true conclusion.
10. Logical strength depends only on the truth or falsity of the conclusion
11. If A is necessary for B, then B can’t occur without A
12. If A is sufficient but not necessary for B, then B must occur if A does.

Identify the Fallacy

Choices (Note: some may not be needed): (a) Division (b) Composition (c) Hasty Generalization (d) Appeal to Ignorance (e) Equivocation (f) Strawman (g) Begging the Question (h) Weak Analogy (i) False Alternative (j) Appeal to Authority

11. There’s been more fraud in this election than ever before—Fox News said so.
12. My friend is a Republican who’s voting for Biden, so there must be a major shift in the voting patterns of Republicans this year.
13. Trump’s going to lose the election because Biden is going to win.
14. Climate change can’t be real—it wasn’t even that hot this summer.
15. Either Biden wins and the Democrats take control of the Senate, or we’ll never get more stimulus payments.
16. Stimulus payments are like drugs—once you’ve had one, you’ll just want more, and then you’ll never work again.
17. The experiment did not reveal an implicit agist bias amongst preteens, so they must not be biased.
18. The election is comprised of polls and ballots, and ballots are pieces of paper, so the election is a piece of paper.
19. The Democrats are a party and people in fraternities love parties, so people in fraternities must all be Democrats.

Deductive Argument Identification

Identify whether the following arguments are deductively valid or not.

20. If Biden won the election, then he won in Arizona. He won the election, so he must have won in Arizona.
21. The Democrats took the Senate if Republican voter turnout was bad this year. Republican voter turnout wasn’t bad this year, so the Democrats didn’t take the Senate.
22. Either the grapes are yellow or flapjacks have seeds. Flapjacks don’t have seeds, so grapes must be yellow.
23. If don’t like albondigas then you probably won’t like pozole. But since you do like albondigas, you must like pozole.
24. If you’re an MMA fan then you respect a good ground game, and if you respect a good ground game then you respect Khabib Nurmagomedov. Since you’re not an MMA fan, you must not respect Khabib.

 

Argument Reconstruction

Reconstruct the following paragraphs into a numbered list of premises and a conclusion. Be sure to label the premises and the conclusion, and to include any “missing premises” in your reconstruction. Feel free to interpret the argument in a way that is not a word for word translation. Note that not every sentence in the paragraphs may figure into your reconstructions.

1. Instead of being locked up, people who commit murder when they are in a psychotic state should be treated with drugs to change their condition. When in a psychotic state, they have no control over their own actions. So punishing them is not appropriate because it cannot make them change their behavior. Thus locking them up in prisons or secure units is pointless.
2. Environmentalists who are concerned about the likelihood of extinction of many
   animal and plant species suggest that protected areas should be introduced world- wide. But in some poor countries this would prevent people using the only natural resource available to them. Economic aid should be given to such countries, in addition to setting up protected areas, because without such aid the poor would be paying the price of conservation, rather than the international community.
3. If the money has been stolen, someone must have disabled the alarm system, because the alarm easily wakes me if it goes off. So the culprit must be a member of the security firm which installed the alarm.