Q1

Stimulus:

If Mr. White grows weed, then he also cooks meth. If he synthesizes LSD, then he cannot cook meth. He can make heroin only if he synthesizes LSD.

Translation:

W -> M

LSD -> ~canM

canH -> LSD

Chains:

canH -> LSD -> ~canM (implies ~M) -> ~W

W -> M (implies canM) -> ~LSD -> ~canH

Chains translated:

if he can make heroin, he makes LSD, can't make meth, and doesn't grow weed

if he grows weed, he makes meth, doesn't make LSD, and can't make heroin

is there a rule of thumb to know when to immediately conflate potentiality vs actuality (since one is the superset of the other)? or do we need to write out this extra dimension of M -> canM and ~canM -> ~M, so that we don’t make the mistake of connecting from canM -> M or ~M -> ~canM, until it’s intuitive?

consider if you had given these premises instead, flipping the potentiality and actuality of each variable:

Reverse Stimulus:

If Mr. White can grow weed, then he can also cook meth. If he can synthesize LSD, then he doesn’t cook meth. He makes heroin only if he can synthesize LSD.

Translation:

canW -> canM

canLSD -> ~M

H -> canLSD

Chains:

H -> canLSD -> ~M

chain breaks down here bc just bc he doesn’t currently make meth doesn’t mean it’s impossible for him to make meth; ~M doesn’t imply ~canM

and with the contrapositive:

canW -> canM

whole chain breaks down immediately bc just bc he can make meth doesn’t mean he actually does; canM doesn’t imply M

if the order of “cans” were switched in the stimulus and we assumed that canM = M for simplicity sake, we would have gotten this question wrong. how do we handle this?