One of the concepts in chapter 6 that I found particularly interesting is the indirect way of reasoning with conditionals. The texts says, “Recognizing this form can be hard if ‘not’ occurs in the antecedent or consequent, or if their order is reversed.” (p. 128) An example of this type of reasoning is as follows:
My wife is going to take our son to the park today if she gets her work done before noon.
They didn’t go to the park today.
So my wife didn’t get her work done before noon.
The concept isn’t a hard one to grasp, but I like that things are simple to follow. Some might like things to be clearer, but I find that we aren’t always in a place that allows for that sort of direct conversation. This sort of reasoning also lends itself to deduction. We have to think about what might have happened that lead to the conclusion in front of us.
I like that you really wanted to make things clear about indirect ways to of reasoning with conditionals. The whole concept was easier to grasp when you think about the steps to follow when reasoning with conditionals. Thinking about what happens before the conclusion makes using this type of reasoning more sensible. This reasoning has to do with events mostly and thinking about order of events is crucial. Your example gave a play by play of what the events were and it made it hard to refute your argument. Deduction should be used for arguments like this and it requires logic to be used too.
ReplyDelete