Saturday, October 9, 2010

Conditional Arguments

One concept I found that was fairly interesting would be valid and weak forms of arguments using conditionals. In this area of discussion, the author talks about how if an argument has premises that are true/valid, then there is no way the conclusion cannot be true. As we've discussed before, this topic is similar to what we know: the conclusion cannot be false if the premises are all true. For an example,

"University parking garages requires parking permits for every vehicle. If you do not have one, then you need to purchase one. Vehicles in these garages without parking permits will receive a fine or ticket."

"Abby uses her university's parking garage often. She would purchase daily parking passes, but forgot to one day when she was in a rush. Abby ended up getting a parking permit."

From this example, you could see that the premises are true; university parking garages all require parking passes, and vehicles that do not have one will receive tickets. Related to the real life example, Abby got a parking ticket for forgetting to purchase a parking pass. In conclusion, you cannot state those same premises and then conclude that you won't get a parking ticket.

1 comment:

  1. I liked the example that you used because it is something I can tie in with my own personal experiences with the San Jose State parking garages. One day I was in a rush and forgot to buy a ticket, thus I was given a ticket. Like I have said from other posts on this same subject, it really is amazing how much "If A then B" and "If not B then not A" can apply to pretty much anything in real life. Seeing the contrapositive can help you see the consequences a lot better, which would have helped me a lot in my case if I took a second to think about it.

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