Saturday, October 9, 2010
Interesting Concept
An interesting concept I read about in Chapter 6 was about “Valid and Weak Forms of Arguments Using Conditionals.” Under this section, it explains that if you are given two true premises, there is no way that the concluding argument is not valid. For example, “If Suzy buys a cat, then she will need to buy cat food. Suzy bought a cat. So she needs to buy cat food.” There is no way that Suzy can buy a cat and not have to buy cat food, so this claim is valid. It is impossible that the premises are false and do not follow the clam. In addition, the example is set up in the form that all valid arguments are set up. The form that the example follows is “ If A, then B. A. So B. This makes sense because if the argument was set up in any other fashion, the argument would most likely be invalid due to the format and context of the claim.
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I like how at the end you mentioned that order matters and how you used the A and B equation. Your example would not make sense if you had A then B, so B. If she gets a cat, then she needs to buy cat food, she bought cat food. That could mean that she bought cat food for her parents or a friend. We would not know if she ended up getting a cat. Another order is saying Suzy bought cat food so she needs to get a cat. People without pets could just buy pet food if they wanted to. The argument only makes sense in the order you put it in.
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