Lower Bound for 'Some' - why is it 1 and not 2?

reuabraah

Can anyone please explain to me why the lower bound for ‘some’ is 1 and not 2? Is there no distinction in logic between a singular instance of something occurring within a set vs it occurring at least twice? Isn't it fallacious to conclude that 'some' things in a set possess a certain attribute from the observation of a singular occurrence of that attribute within the set?

For example, the sentence ‘some unicorns are fluffy’ would seem to imply that there are at least two unicorns that are fluffy. Same with the ‘some’ mice living in my home’ example from the lessons on existential quantifiers. J.Y. concludes that if we know that there are 'some' mice in the house, or 'some' unicorns that are fluffy, then we know that there is at least 1 mouse in that house and at least 1 fluffy unicorn. However, the plural forms of the nouns - ‘unicorns’ and ‘mice’ - are used in both of these examples, which would imply more than 1 of each entity. In fact in most cases that I can think of, the word 'some' implies a plurality of the noun that follows it.

If there were 100 unicorns in the world and 99 of them weren’t fluffy while only 1 of them was, could we really accurately conclude that ‘some’ unicorns (again, plural) are fluffy from this singular instance of fluffiness? What if that unicorn was an anomaly and turns out to be the only fluffy unicorn in the history of unicorns?

help

Leah M B

Grammar like this is always tricky. In the context of the LSAT, the most important thing to remember is not necessarily what is ingrained in us as being proper usage (sometimes it is just colloquial use and not proper). The most important thing is how the LSAT uses specific words. And the makers of the LSAT definitely use "some" to only mean more than 0. So even if it goes against what we perceive to be correct, we have to bear in mind that we need to use the definitions that the LSAT uses.

That aside, in English, I believe the definition of "some" is the same - more than 0. First, "the unicorns" that you refer to is pluralized because that noun is referring to all the unicorns in existence. The plural isn't there because of the word "some". Because this sentence is also correct, "One of the unicorns..." It's plural because that noun is in place to mean all of the unicorns that exist. "Some" by definition really just means "an unspecified number or amount". (See https://www.dictionary.com/browse/some?s=t -- definition 2 and 3). By definition it means: more than none.

Hope that helped some (hahah...). The biggest thing to remember again though is we have to know how the LSAT uses words, and the makers of the LSAT definitely do use it to only signify "more than none".

reuabraah

Thanks so much! Perhaps if I think of it in a different phrasing it will stick better for me. When they say 'some unicorns are fluffy', it could be read as - 'within the set of all unicorns, (at least) some (1, not 2) unicorn is fluffy.' I will just accept that this is the way it is for the LSAT.

It's not something that is really holding back my studies, just a point that I thought was worth raising. Is there not some formal logical fallacy wherein one observes that a singular member of a set possesses a certain attribute and then concludes that more than one of that set possesses that attribute, discounting the possibility that the singular observed instance is an exception that does not generalize further across the set at all? Maybe that's the fallacy I'm committing, or maybe it's related to my original question. I can't tell. :-) Thanks again!

reuabraah

I guess what I'm describing is just faulty generalization. Thanks for helping me get clear on that! :-)

Bamboosprout

That's a good way to phrase it, and will fix your problems.

My understanding of why this is the case is that grammar is different from logic. Grammar can have many discrete divisions when counting numbers, but in logic, it's necessary to have some dichotomies, for example, none vs some, MBT vs CBF, or Green or Red but not both. 'Some' in real life obviously refers to numbers greater than one. I wouldn't just point to one person and say "There are some people over there", but in logic, as JY and many logicians define it, 'some' simply means 'not none'.