Study Guide
PHL 102
Spring 2007
The midterm will emphasize chapters 1, 2, and 4 together with sections 3.1 and 5.1. At
this time, 3.2, 5.2 and 5.3 have also been assigned. These will help but won’t be required
for the exam. IMPORTANT: Your most important study will be from the Café problems.
Keep at it…and redo from the earlier chapters.
IMPORTANT: You should do some of this with me on Elluminate. If you come to the
virtual office hours, we can slowly go over whatever you’d like.
I. Arguments: be able to distinguish arguments from non-arguments, know premise and
conclusion indicators, be able to diagram arguments (with independent and collaborative
arrows as in 1.4 and Araucaria).
II. Inductive Arguments: You should know the inductive concepts (inductive, strong,
cogent) and be able to apply them. And you should know types of inductive argument.
The most important type so far is the argument by analogy. How do you evaluate these?
It’s not so easy. See both the Café and the philosophypages.com link for details.
IMPORTANT: make sure your response to someone (or even yourself) includes a nice
analysis in terms (some) of the six points for evaluating analogies. The exam will include
something like this!
III. Deductive Arguments: You should know the deductive concepts (deductive, valid,
sound, logically true, self-contradictory, contingent, logically equivalent, consistent).
These are defined in chapter 2 (or before) even though they are applied in chapter 4 and
tested by tables. You’ll need to know what formal logic is (basically it’s a deductive
argument), know the valid forms (e.g., DS) and the invalid ones (e.g., AC).
IV. Tables…you should be able to do truth tables of one row or many rows. (How many
rows are there for ‘A&(Bv~C)’?) You should be able to do all the tests for deductive
concepts.
V. Symbolizations: There are lots of these in chapters 2 and 4. So, there will be a bunch
on the exam!
Further Study Questions … These are a little different and I’ll put some problems like
these on the exam. Maybe some on the quiz. You can talk about these with me and in
your groups. Still, the best thing to study is the Café exercises.
1.
Can a sound argument have a true conclusion? A false conclusion?
2.
Can a valid argument have true premises and a false conclusion? Can a valid
argument have a true conclusion?
Is it possible to have an invalid argument with false premises and a true conclusion?
3.
The argument “If Laura Bush is president then Laura Bush lives in the White
House. Laura Bush lives in the White House. Thus, Laura Bush is president” is:
(a) Valid and Sound
(b) Valid and Unsound
(c) Invalid
4.
The argument “If Laura Bush is president then Laura Bush lives in the White
House. Laura Bush lives in the White House. Thus, Laura Bush is president” is:
(a) Valid and Sound
(b) Valid and Unsound
(c) Invalid
5.
The argument “If Laura Bush is president then Laura Bush lives in the White
House. Laura Bush isn’t president Thus, Laura Bush doesn’t live in the White
House.” is:
(a) Valid and Sound
(b) Valid and Unsound
(c) Invalid
6.
Name the forms for each of the arguments above. (DS?, MT? AC? Etc.)
7.
The argument “Canada is north of Mexico, and the US is north of Mexico.
Therefore, Canada is north of the U.S.” is deductive,…
(a) Valid and Sound
(b) Valid and Unsound
(c) Invalid
8.
The argument “Some cars are white and all Fords are cars. Thus, all Fords are
white.” is deductive,…
(a) Valid and Sound
(b) Valid and Unsound
(c) Invalid
9. Suppose the truth tables for two statements are given by the following.
There is a mistake in each. Circle both mistakes.
10 -11 have to do with three sentences of SL, S1, S2 , and S3. The three sentences are
constructed out of atomic sentences ‘A’ and ‘B’ and have truth tables with the following
under their main connectives.
S1
T
F
T
F
S2
F
T
T
F
S3
F
F
T
T
(For example, the first sentence might be ‘~B’. Or, just as well, it could be
‘(A&~B)v(~A&~B)’
10. Give SL sentences that would have the truth table given for S2 and S3. Hint: there is
more than one correct answer just as with S1.
11.
Which one of the following statements is true/correct:
(a) The argument with S1 as premise and S2 as conclusion is valid
(b) The argument with S1 as premise and S3 as conclusion is valid
(c) The argument with S2 as premise and S3 as conclusion is valid
(d) The argument with S2 as premise and S1 as conclusion is invalid
12.
Which one of the following statements is true/correct:
(a) The argument with S1 and S2 as premises and S3 as conclusion is valid
(b) The argument with S2 and S3 as premises and S1 as conclusion is invalid
(c) The argument with S1 and S3 as premises and S2 as conclusion is invalid
Here’s a new one. See if you can think this one through. I’ll certainly ask something like
this on an exam or quiz.
13.
In general, which one of the following statements is true/correct:
(a) All arguments having inconsistent premises are invalid
(b) All arguments having inconsistent premises are valid
(c) All arguments having a logically true premise are valid
(d) All arguments having a logically true/tautologous conclusion are invalid