"Or" is causing me necessity - sufficiency confusion

stevencamendolastevencamendola Alum Member
in Logic Games 150 karma

So, the concept of an inclusive "or" was 100% foreign to me when introduced, and then even the exclusive "or" given another moment to think and allow the inclusive concept to sink in. In my English such as I've always understood it, "Or" is bi-conditional.

A <-> /B

Always, unless it means "and." Not neither, not both. I can't think of an example in English where this isn't the case. It's really screwing me up.

None of the examples given anywhere on the internet strike me as actually meaning anything else. People speak imprecisely all the time and all of the examples of inclusive or exclusive "or" unless "either" or "and/or" is actually used just strike me as imprecise verbal handles, not precise instances of or, which always means A <-> /B to me.

Help!

Comments

  • OhnoeshalpmeOhnoeshalpme Alum Member ⭐
    2531 karma

    "I will do well on my exam if I study for my exam or meditate beforehand" This is "or" in the inclusive sense meaning that I can do well on the exam if I do both - I don't have to choose one or the other. I'm not being imprecise, I am just stating that there are two things that I can do to produce the same outcome. In LSAT language, both meditation and studying are sufficient conditions. So in the inclusive sense of the word "or" we can take both halves of the statement as sufficient conditions.

  • stevencamendolastevencamendola Alum Member
    150 karma

    So bear with me if you can but I have strong intuitions about natural language which I think is messing me up me here, I got -0 RC on my calibration test but cocked up the rest. "Or" there is at least not exactly the same as DWE (/S -> M, /M -> S). Of course that's inclusive because it's in logic. I can't translate that from your sentence, that's just a list of two possibilities. There is imprecision there, meditation obviously isn't independently sufficient for doing well on an exam, it's irrelevant to exam performance, so even the sufficiency relationship of the one relata there is not implied, where as in logic it's taken as a given from "or" alone. Until I can form a sentence where the meaning of "or" in logic is contextually related in English I'm going to have a hard time translating it back and forth from English.

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