2019 Taylor Francis chapter 1

© 2019 Taylor & Francis chapter 1 Section 1.2 Identify Premises and Conclusions Exercises on pages 9–11

• Premise: A well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state.

Conclusion: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

2. Premises:

(1) It’s easier (than photocopying) to buy your friend a paperback copy of a book.(2) A paperback copy of the book is inexpensive.

Conclusion: What stops many people from photocopying a book and giving it

to a pal is not integrity but logistics.

3. Premise: Human intelligence is a gift from God.

Conclusion: To apply human intelligence to understand the world is not an

affront to God, but is pleasing to him.

• Premise: Sir Edmund Hilary dedicated his life to helping build schools and hospitals

for the Sherpas who helped him to climb Mount Everest.

Conclusion: He is, for that reason, a hero.

5. Premises:

(1) Standardized tests have a disparate racial impact, as illustrated by the differ- ence in the average scores of different ethnic groups.(2) Ethnic differences arise on all kinds of tests, at all levels.Conclusion: If a racial gap is evidence of discrimination, then all tests discriminate.

• Premise: Everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with good sense that

even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.Conclusion: Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally distributed.

7. Premise: Any words new to the United States are either stupid or foreign.

Conclusion: There is no such thing as the American language; there’s just bad

English.

• Premise: In New York State alone taxpayers spent more than $200 million in a failed

death penalty experiment, with no one executed.

Conclusion: The death penalty is too costly.

Premise: [There has been] an epidemic of exonerations of death row inmates

upon post-conviction investigation, including ten New York inmates freed in the (Introduction to Logic, 15e Irving Copi, Carl Cohen, Victor Rodych) (Solution Manual, For Complete File, Download link at the end of this File) 1 / 4

Introduction to Logic 2© 2019 Taylor & Francis last eighteen months from long sentences being served for murders or rapes they did not commit.Conclusion: Capital punishment is unfair in its application, in addition to being too costly.

 9. Premise: Houses are built to live in, not to look on.

Conclusion: Use is to be preferred before [i.e., above] uniformity.

10. Premises:

(1) A boycott, although not violent, can cause economic harm to many.(2) The greater the impact of a boycott, the more impressive is the statement it makes.(3) The economic consequences of a boycott are likely to be felt by innocent bystanders, who suffer loss of income because of it.

Conclusion: The boycott weapon ought to be used sparingly.

11. Premises:

(1) In the early part of the 20th century forced population shifts were not uncommon.(2) In that period multicultural empires crumbled and nationalism drove the for- mation of new, ethnically homogenous countries.

Conclusion: Ethnic cleansing was viewed not so long ago as a legitimate tool of

foreign policy.

12. Premises:

(1) If a jury is sufficiently unhappy with the government’s case or the govern- ment’s conduct, it can simply refuse to convict.(2) This possibility puts powerful pressure on the state to behave properly.

Conclusion: A jury is one of the most important protections of a democracy.

13. Premises:

(1) Orangutans spend more than 95 percent of their time in the trees, which, along with vines and termites, provide more than 99 percent of their food.(2) Their only habitat is formed by the tropical rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra.

Conclusion: Without forests, orangutans cannot survive.

• Premise: If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene

to change the course of history using his omnipotence.

Conclusion: God cannot change his mind about his intervention.

Premise: God cannot change his mind about his intervention.

Conclusion: If God is omniscient he is not omnipotent.

Premise: If God is omniscient he is not omnipotent.

Conclusion: Omniscient and omnipotence are mutually incompatible.

15. Premises:

(1) Reason never comes to the aid of spiritual things.(2) More frequently than not, reason struggles against the divine Word, treating all that comes from God with contempt.Conclusion: Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has. 2 / 4

Solutions Manual 3© 2019 Taylor & Francis Section 1.4 Arguments and Explanations Exercises on pages 19–22

• This is essentially an explanation. What is being explained is the fact that humans

have varying skin colors. The explanation is that different skin colors evolved as humans came to live at different distances from the Equator and hence needed different degrees of protection from the rays of the sun. One might interpret the passage as an argument whose conclusion is that skin color is not a permanent trait of all humans. Under this interpretation, all the propositions preceding the final sentence of the passage serve as premises.

• This is an argument whose conclusion is that the victories of American labor through

the passage of ostensibly neutral laws regulating labor, were seriously adverse to the interests of blacks, and resulted in the now longstanding gap between black and white unemployment rates. One might interpret the passage simply as an explana- tion, in which what is being explained is that gap, but this interpretation leaves aside the many ramifications of the argument.

• This is an explanation. What is being explained is why sex feels good. The expla-

nation is that those animals in which it does feel good have more offspring, and therefore more evolutionary success, than those animals in which sex does not so effectively motivate. If we did not know that sex feels good, this might be consid- ered an argument to show that it does; but since the pleasure of sex is a fact not in serious question here, the passage is best viewed as an explanation of that reality.

• This is an argument. Its premises are that (1) changes are real and (2) changes are

only possible in time. The conclusion is that time must be something real.

• This may be interpreted either as an explanation or as an argument. Viewed as an

explanation,  what is being explained is the fact, not doubted here, that the nursing shortage has turned into a crisis. The explanation of that fact is a combination of observations, including the fact that fewer young people are going into nursing, that many older nurses are on the verge of retirement, that nurses often report high rates of job dissatisfaction and plan to leave the profession, and that hospitals routinely cancel or delay surgical cases because of a lack of nursing staff. Viewed as an argument, all these factors are premises supporting the conclusion that the shortage of nurses has indeed turned into a crisis.

• This is an argument. Dewey is calling attention to the fact that to show what caused

an event is not sufficient to justify it or to condemn it, because justification or con- demnation comes (in his view) only through the consequences of the event, not its origin.

• This passage is mainly an argument, whose conclusion is that a king cannot be

subject to his own laws. Its premises are: (1) it is impossible to bind oneself in any matter which is the subject of one’s own free exercise of will, and (2) the laws are no more than the product of the king’s free will. The passage also serves as an explanation of the words commonly used in completing edicts and ordinances of a king: “for such is our good pleasure.” This reinforces the argument above, since the king plainly cannot be bound by that which is determined only by his own good pleasure.

• This is a bit of Oscar Wilde’s humor that can be interpreted in various ways—as a sar-

donic argument attacking Wagner’s music, perhaps, or as a lighthearted explanation 3 / 4

Introduction to Logic 4© 2019 Taylor & Francis of Wilde’s hidden pleasure in that music. Or perhaps there is nothing seriously intended in the passage at all! 9. Although this could be viewed as an argument, it was very probably intended by the author as an explanation of the increased likelihood of cheating, that explanation consisting of the enumeration of several aspects of contemporary American society.

• This is an explanation. What is explained is the fact that Cupid has been tradition-

ally painted as blind. The explanation is that love, which Cupid represents, does not look with the eyes and therefore does not see.

• This may be viewed either as an explanation or as an argument. If one takes the

reported suggestion (that it is the greater sexual selection pressure on women that accounts for their quantity of body hair) as true or known to be highly probable, then this passage is a more detailed explanation of how this came to pass. If, on the other hand, one takes the conclusion (that the lesser amount of body hair on women is due to sexual selection pressure) as in genuine doubt, then this passage may be interpreted as an argument in support of that conclusion. Of the two inter- pretations, the former seems the more plausible.

• This is an argument whose conclusion is that the threat of nuclear war is useless

against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The premises are: (1) Iran’s lead- ers do not care about killing their people in great numbers, (2) Ahmadinejad is a religious fanatic, (3) to such a fanatic, dying while fighting the enemy is a quick pass to heaven, and (4) the mutually assured destruction that worked so well as a deterrent during the Cold War would instead be an inducement to war.

• This is an argument whose conclusion is that interesting life can exist only in three

dimensions. The premises are that (1) blood flow and large numbers of neural con- nections cannot exist in fewer than three dimensions, and (2) stable planetary orbits are not possible in more than three dimensions. (The argument makes the unstated assumption that the conditions described are necessary conditions for interesting life.)

• This is an argument but the first sentence in the passage is background material

and not strictly a premise, although it is needed by the reader to understand the argument that follows immediately. After the conclusion (“we need them”) appears the traditional Q.E.D.—which is the abbreviation for “quod erat demonstradum,” meaning “what was to be demonstrated.”

• This is an argument. Its conclusion is that the Treasury Department has violated

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Its premises are: (1) the Department has failed to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visu- ally impaired individuals, and (2) (implied) this failure subjects blind and visually impaired persons to discrimination under an activity by an Executive agency.

• This is an argument whose conclusion is that acting in ways that fulfill one’s duty

never guarantees the moral goodness of the actor. The premise is that the act may be done from a motive that is indifferent or bad, and that the act may therefore be morally indifferent or bad.

• This is an argument. Its conclusion is that belief in God is not beyond reason. Its

premises are: (1) only the supreme mind of God could create immutable and eternal laws, (2) human reason can grasp some immutable and eternal laws, such as the circle or the square or the laws of physics, and (3) in having that capacity, human reason must possess an innate particle of the mind of God.

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