Determining the sufficient and necessary clause with tricky "only"

Started by Brett-Lindsay · started 2020-07-09 06:39 · last activity 2021-02-10 13:00 · 3 replies

After struggling for several minutes to correctly interpret the conclusion for this question, I was surprised that very few people were talking about the difficulty in determing the sufficient and necessary clause in the sentence: "It follows that only those who appreciate these advances are computer scientists." The important part of the sentence is as follows: "only those who appreciate these advances are computer scientists" which seems to mean "The only people who appreciate these advances are computer scientists" or "Computer scientists are the only people who appreciate these advances" For some reason, I found distinguishing this S from N really confusing. Still, it's taught me something valuable about how to view the sentences - don't use everyday understanding to interpret a sentence. I think that this is the correct way to interpret it: Only A are B: (B --> A) "only [those who appreciate these advances] are [computer scientists]" [computer scientists] --> [those who appreciate these advances] The only A are B: "The only [people who appreciate these advances] are [computer scientists]" [people who appreciate these advances] --> [computer scientists] A are the only B: "[Computer scientists] are the only [people who appreciate these advances]" [people who appreciate these advances] --> [computer scientists] Please correct me if I'm mistaken in any with this.

Replies

  1. ellenkate · 2020-07-10 19:43

    So are you saying that the second (The only A are B) interpretation is the flawed one because it is taking what should be N and making it S? If so, this really helped.
  2. Brett-Lindsay · 2020-07-11 01:49

    @ellenkate, That's exactly right - the conclusion has reversed the two statements. It's saying that if a person is a computer scientist, then they will definitely appreciate the advances. The premises say that nobody but a computer scientist could understand the advances, but that doesn't guarantee that all computer scientists will appreciate it. That flaw matches answer B.
  3. Yusuf-Adkins · 2021-02-10 13:00

    I am just confused about about the wording and how to draw it out I put : cs-------understand PC (first condition) ps-------AAT (2nd condition) Conculsion : cs appreciate advancement of Tech but the conditionals show the reverse of what i put when i was following the words of S/N conditions. Can someone help me to why that is?

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