The Simple Pleasures in Our Lives

i have forgotten all my philos 210!

was looking at the argument

premise 1: all good writers are angsty people
premise 2: deb is not an angsty person
conclusion: deb is not a good writer

there are two ways to refute arguments. one is to attack the truth of the premises. another is to attack the structure of the argument itself. the argument can be written as a categorical syllogism:

1: all A are B
2. no C are B (cannot write all C are not B. it is not a proper categorical syllogism if written in that form. sentences have to written in all ? are ?. no ? are ?. some ? are ?. some ? are not ?.)
conclusion: no C are A

going by the rules of categorical syllogisms:
rule 1: there must be the same number of negations in the premises as there are in the conclusion. (fulfilled)
rule 2: at least one premise must distribute the middle term (fulfilled)
rule 3: whatever term is distributed in the conclusion must also be distributed in the premises. (fulfilled)
==> argument is VALID.

i really shouldn't be sleeping so late. especially when i am still suffering from a huge sleep deficit. hmm.

posted by xu @ 12:59 AM