Top Law Schools

I apologize if this is a subject already being discussed in another post. I have stumbled upon these very uncommon practices on some of the PT's (mostly on flaw questions) and was wondering if someone can finally clear this up for me!

I consider myself pretty well-versed with conditional statements. So, the usual inferences are more than clear. However, I will illustrate my question below using this simple logic statement: A --> B

I would greatly appreciate it if other members can make comments on the below items:

1) Am I correctly inferring that we cannot know what else is a necessary condition of "A". Additionally, I cannot correctly infer what else is not necessary, correct? There could be an unlimited number of unstated necessary conditions; is this correct?

2) Am I correctly inferring that we cannot know what else is a necessary condition of "B". I remember one credited answer choice of a flaw question (which, based on the above conditional statement, concluded that "C is not required for A to occur") stated "we cannot assume that "C" is not required for "B". ("C" was a completely new item to the argument and was only mentioned in the conclusion).

3) Can I correctly infer that "B" may be required for other conditions? In essence, that "B" may have an unlimited number of unstated sufficient conditions? So, if an argument states that "B" is only required for "A", would be a logical fallacy, correct?

4) For the sake of this particular question, please disregard the original conditional statement in bold. If an argument ever states "B is not required for A to occur", am I correctly inferring that this does NOT denote any conditional logic? If an argument talks about something not being required, we cannot correctly infer anything, correct?

Thanks ahead of time for any feedback! Your help is much appreciated. Also, if any posters have any additional unusual conditional logic insight and/or inferences, please teach me!

This post made my head hurt. Can you just post the actual question in people words and ask any questions about it? Because based on your questions, the only thing that I gathered is that you don't completely understand the basic If-Then conditional and that you need it explained to you.

Seems you may have misunderstood my questions... I am looking for general help regarding the above occurrences. I do understand IF-THEN statements. A lot of questions seem to directly attack the above lesser-understood phenomenons. Thanks for trying...

.

slingshot_fuel wrote:Seems you may have misunderstood my questions... I am looking for general help regarding the above occurrences. I do understand IF-THEN statements. A lot of questions seem to directly attack the above lesser-understood phenomenons. Thanks for trying...

If you need "general help" then you don't understand If-Then. If you need specific help, post a specific question.

A --> B does not have any implication other than A --> B (and of course -B --> -A)

it is possible that they each have other suf/nec conditions, but not relevant unless you are given those conditions in the question. Also, specific questions are usually better.

slingshot_fuel wrote:I apologize if this is a subject already being discussed in another post. I have stumbled upon these very uncommon practices on some of the PT's (mostly on flaw questions) and was wondering if someone can finally clear this up for me!

I consider myself pretty well-versed with conditional statements. So, the usual inferences are more than clear. However, I will illustrate my question below using this simple logic statement: A --> B

I would greatly appreciate it if other members can make comments on the below items:

1) Am I correctly inferring that we cannot know what else is a necessary condition of "A". Additionally, I cannot correctly infer what else is not necessary, correct? There could be an unlimited number of unstated necessary conditions; is this correct?

2) Am I correctly inferring that we cannot know what else is a necessary condition of "B". I remember one credited answer choice of a flaw question (which, based on the above conditional statement, concluded that "C is not required for A to occur") stated "we cannot assume that "C" is not required for "B". ("C" was a completely new item to the argument and was only mentioned in the conclusion).

3) Can I correctly infer that "B" may be required for other conditions? In essence, that "B" may have an unlimited number of unstated sufficient conditions? So, if an argument states that "B" is only required for "A", would be a logical fallacy, correct?

4) For the sake of this particular question, please disregard the original conditional statement in bold. If an argument ever states "B is not required for A to occur", am I correctly inferring that this does NOT denote any conditional logic? If an argument talks about something not being required, we cannot correctly infer anything, correct?

Thanks ahead of time for any feedback! Your help is much appreciated. Also, if any posters have any additional unusual conditional logic insight and/or inferences, please teach me!

Good questions; your inferences are correct. Yes to 1,2,3,4.