PT139.S4.Q21 - If Skiff's book is published

hjm2142

I am not understanding JY’s (or any other online) explanation as to why the answer is A. I’m not understanding how he gets from “If important AND well written then published therefore If important then published.”

Is the idea that importance implies that it also well written?? Or is it that the “and” there is really functioning as an “or”? If it’s functioning as an “or”, why? Thanks in advance!

Admin note: edited title; please use the format of "PT#.S#.Q# - [first set of words]"

hjm2142

Bump

ntrepanier5

I'll take a stab at this one!

Prem 1: Book Published-->Nguyen Recommend
Prem 2: Nguyen Recommend-->Dean Promote
CONC: Important + WW-->Dean Promote

So, there's a big gap in the Conclusion: the introduction of "importance" and quality of writing ("WW"). If we make an abstracted form of the arg, it's a little easier to see:

Prem 1: A-->B
Prem 2: B-->C
At this point, I'd be expecting the Conclusion to chain these up and say A-->C, but instead, it introduces some brand new info:
CONC: D+E-->C.

The easiest way to justify the conclusion then, would be to find something that chains D or E to one of our premises. A gets that perfectly: Important-->Book Published. Or, abstracted: D-->A-->B-->C, which shortens to D-->C.

The way I see it, there's no connection we need to make between importance and quality of writing in terms of justifying the coclusion. I think we could similarly justify the conclusion if we said "If high Quality of Writing, then Book will be Published." I think one of the terms is just intentionally extra to throw us of while we're working through the problem. If there were only one new term in the conclusion, then this problem wouldn't deserve to be 5*. If we can complete a conditional logic chain from one of the points in the conclusion to the premises, then the argument is completely justified and there's no need to address the other weird point in the conclusion.

To your question, I don't think the "and" at the end is functioning as an "or".

Hopefully this helps!

hjm2142

I’m still honestly not following even a little bit (although I appreciate you taking the time to try).

I don’t understand how we get from:

If Important AND Well-written -> Nguyen Recommends -> Promoted

TO

If JUST IMPORTANT - > Nguyen Recommends - > Promoted

In my mind its like A+B=C therefore A=C which is just not making sense to me.

I can absolutely imagine a world where the book is important but not well-written and therefore the condition that the book be both important and well-written is not satisfied. If your claim is that the condition actually doesn’t require both then my question is how the heck do we know to ignore the “and” in this context?