Completion requirements
These sections will introduce you to the concept of validity – the term for when the conclusion of an argument follows from its premises. Pay careful attention to the difference between validity and soundness. All sound arguments are valid, but not all valid arguments are sound. Remember that premises do not have to be true for an argument to be valid.
Complete Exercise 5, checking your answers against the key.
Exercise
Answers
- Invalid. Counterexample: Katie is severely mentally handicapped and so
is not smarter than a chimpanzee.
- Invalid. Counterexample: suppose Bob just became a fireman, so he has never actually put out any fires.
- Invalid. Counterexample: Although Gerald probably knows how to teach mathematics, suppose he has just had a traumatic brain injury and no longer knows how to teach mathematics. And suppose the injury is recent enough for him not to have lost his job as a mathematics professor yet.
- Invalid. Counterexample: A similar counterexample as #3 would work
equally as well here.
- Valid.
- Invalid. Counterexample: Perhaps Craig and Linda are married, but
Monique is Linda's secret lover and Craig just finds about it and is angry
and hates Monique (but still loves Linda).
- Invalid. Counterexample: suppose that although Orel Hershizer believes that God exists, in fact God doesn't exist. In that case, Orel can't communicate with God, since you can't communicate with something that doesn't exist (i.e., communication is a two-way interaction).
- Valid.
- Valid.
- Valid.