1. Express this argument in premises and conclusion form (including any missing premises or conclusion).
The most important task facing educators today is teaching students how to write well. Those who write well will be able to understand the work of our culture's great thinkers. Better still, those who can write well will be able to communicate effectively in today’s world.2. Is the following argument deductively valid? Explain
P1: The Liberals won more seats in the last election than any other party.3. The following claim is true:
C: The Liberals received more votes than any other party in the last election.
An argument whose conclusion is a tautology is a deductively valid argument.Write a sound argument (in premises and conclusion form) to prove the claim is true. (Note: a tautology is a claim which must be true.)
4. Suppose all you know about an argument is that all its premises are true and its conclusion is true. Can you conclude anything based on this about whether the argument is logically strong?
For questions 5-8, indicate any fallacies committed in the passage. Explain your answer.
5. That sauce I ate must have aged cheese in it. Aged cheese always gives me a terrible headache and right now I feel as if my head is going to explode.
6. When General Grant was winning battles in the West, President Lincoln received many complaints about Grant’s being a drunkard. When a delegation told him one day that Grant was hopelessly addicted to whiskey, the President is said to have replied, "I wish General Grant would sent a barrel of whiskey to each of my other generals!" [Note: for the purposes of answering the question, assume Lincoln was serious.]
7. "As an academic, Professor Benedict J. Kerkvliet has given himself away as biased and unscientific … It is pathetic to see Professor Kerkvliet, a non-Filipino, deploring political and social conditions in a foreign country like the Philippines when his own country calls for social and moral regeneration." From a letter to the editor in The Honolulu Advertiser, December 5, 1974.
8. Some folks complain that the U.S. has a larger percentage of its population in jail than any other Western country; well, that’s true. But then they say that we ought to try to reduce the U.S. prison population. They must be morons. Apparently, these people think that murderers and bank robbers should be free to commit their crimes without doing prison time. When people do the crime, they should do the time – and those people who think we should reduce the prison population haven’t really thought enough about how terrible it would really be to turn those vicious criminals loose with little or no punishment.