{I am only doing this because I wish someone else would.}
3.3 Modus Ponens made so much more sense to me after we "unpacked" almost every exercise in class yesterday. That is, of course, until I redid every exercise. I'm happy to report that I didn't make as many mistakes in round 2 as I did in round 1, but I still made a few.
I was terribly puzzled by 4.1, though not until I went to check my answers against the answer key. Somehow I'd managed to misplace my bookmark, a helpful, information-packed pamphlet titled, "A Philosophy Toolkit," just before the exercises of chapter 6.1. So I now have negations, contradictories, and disjunctions swirling around in an already confused brain.
I only missed the double negation in the symbolizing exercises. Only one of my translations into, "a readable English statement," matched Arthur's in the key.
Here are my translations:
2b) Montesquieu is to be believed, even though there is no God, we must still venerate justice.
B -> ( ~G-> V)
c) Do not believe Montesquieu, venerate justice because there is no God.
~B-> (V-> ~G)
d) There is a God, do not believe Montesquieu.
G & ~ B
e) We must venerate justice and believe Montesquieu, there is no God.
(V & G) -> ~G
The assignment was for a readable statement, not one that really makes sense, right? Anyway, it was terribly difficult to put this up for review now that I have seen Arthur's answers...
I am still trying to unravel why "No politicians are corrupt." and "All politicians are corrupt." aren't contradictory.
As far as I can tell, the truth of p is incompatible with the truth of q... Perhaps I misunderstand.
FYI: I like to get in the classroom about half an hour before class, so if anyone else wants to chatter about this stuff informally, that is a good time for me.
After checking my own answers to 4.1, I'm afraid I was having the same problem as you; you're not alone! I find that translating from variables ( i.e. ( V & G ) -> ~G ) to be one of the most difficult things. I believe that it may be because we as English language speakers do not learn the more complex aspects of sentence mechanics in our educational histories. Looking back to my years of taking foreign language in high school, I realized that I learned more about subjunctive tense and how to conjugate words than I had in my own native language. You simply know that things change, you don't have to work out conjugating words. If we're going to be blunt, English is a complex language that just doesn't make a lick of sense sometimes, which makes piecing together sentences one of the greatest struggles simply because we don't have to work from the building blocks of language most of the time.
ReplyDeleteI hope this makes sense, but I feel as though while we lean this is going to come easier and become more clear to us all. I'm also very interested in hearing your opinions on the matter, I may have to show up to class a bit early on Monday to discuss with you!