TOUGH Logical Negation- help! Forum

[youknowryan]

The sentence is:

No successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness.

Conditional in nature I take it to mean: successful strategy ----> ~loneliness intensified

To logically negate it, I think it should look like this: successful strategy ----> loneliness intensified

How do I put that into words?

My best guess:

A successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness intensifies that loneliness.

successful strategy ----> loneliness intensified

Please share your thoughts.

[3|ink]

The logical opposite of "No" or "None" is some.

Whenever you take the logical opposite, you must remember to consider "not necessarily". If something is not necessarily "no", it is possibly "yes" or "some". Thus, I'd negate it as follows:

There may be some successful strategies for overcoming adolescent loneliness that intensify loneliness.

[youknowryan]

I am trying to weaken this statement:

"If they lose interest in a hobby, their loneliness may be exacerbated. So developing an all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness."

I take this:

No successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness.

Negate it:

There may be some successful strategies for overcoming adolescent loneliness that intensify that loneliness.

I am still not sure that does much to weaken the conclusion.

Edit: is it as simple as the idea that successful strategies WILL overcome loneliness (implied in the conclusion) and the negated sentence calls that into question?

[3|ink]

I am trying to weaken this statement:

"If they lose interest in a hobby, their loneliness may be exacerbated. So developing an all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness."

I take this:

No successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness.

Negate it:

There may be some successful strategies for overcoming adolescent loneliness that intensify that loneliness.

I am still not sure that does much to weaken the conclusion.

Edit: is it as simple as the idea that successful strategies WILL overcome loneliness (implied in the conclusion) and the negated sentence calls that into question?

You're only showing part of the stimulus, but I think I can piece it together from this. I take it that some part of the stimulus says "Developing an all consuming hobby eventually leads to losing interest." Following this is "Losing interest in a hobby intensifies loneliness." Then, all of the sudden, it pulls "not successful strategy" out of left field. You need to link "not successful strategy" with "exacerbating loneliness". The answer choice does this. It's like saying:

Premise 1: developing all consuming hobby -> lose interest in hobby
Premise 2: lose interest in hobby->intensifies loneliness
Premise 3: intensifies loneliness -> not successful strategy
Conclusion: developing an all-consuming hobby is not a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness.

Premise 3 is simply the contrapositive of our answer choice.
No successful strategy for overcoming loneliness ever intensifies = If something intensifies loneliness, it is not a successful strategy for overcoming loneliness.

I personally hate the negation technique. I never use it. For your sake, I’ll explain why it makes sense despite its uselessness. The conclusion uses “Intensifying loneliness” as a sufficient condition for deducing that the strategy is not successful. If, however, it were possible for a successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness to intensify loneliness, this truth alone would completely eviscerate the argument. It would basically say that a strategy's intensifying loneliness is not a sufficient condition for determining that said strategy is unsuccessful.

[fosterp]

The sentence is:

No successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness ever intensifies that loneliness.

Conditional in nature I take it to mean: successful strategy ----> ~loneliness intensified

To logically negate it, I think it should look like this: successful strategy ----> loneliness intensified

How do I put that into words?

My best guess:

A successful strategy for overcoming adolescent loneliness intensifies that loneliness.

successful strategy ----> loneliness intensified

Please share your thoughts.

You have the right idea, however the way you wrote it means that it will intensify, thats not how far you go with the logical negation though. The logical opposite of that statement would be

"some successful strategies for overcoming adolescent loneliness intensify that loneliness" "at least one successful strategy..."

Basically you are just taking none, and turning it into not none (which is at least one)

Logically negating a statement has nothing to do with writing it in symbolic form.

Think of it this way:

All cars are red,

to negate - Not all cars are red - or - some cars are not red - or, at least one car is not red.

The sky is always blue

to negate - the sky is not always blue.