Quick Question about Conditional Statements

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• taschasp Alum Member Sage ⭐

  May 2020 edited May 2020 796 karma

  1) No -- if the sufficient condition is not met, or if the necessary condition is met, in both of those cases it doesn't affect the conditional statement. The statement doesn't become invalid; it just becomes irrelevant.

  Like, if I tell you that all the apples in my fridge are rotten (apple -> rotten). So you open the fridge and you see a pear. I didn't tell you anything about any non-apple things in my fridge, so my statement about apples is useless to you.

  Similarly, based on the same conditional, if your friend came and pulled something out and told you it was rotten, you don't know if it was an apple or not, so the conditional statement isn't helpful there either. It could be an apple that's rotten, but it could also be something else that's gone bad, since I didn't tell you about whether apples were the only thing in my fridge that is rotten (if I did, that would have been rotten -> apple)

  2) That's it. If I told you that all apples in my fridge are rotten (apple -> rotten) and you open my fridge and find an apple that isn't rotten, then you've proved my conditional statement to be false. You always do this by showing that you can meet the sufficient condition while denying the necessary condition -- in effect, it shows that the necessary condition (being rotten, in this case) wasn't necessary (for apples) after all! And it also shows that the sufficient condition (being an apple) wasn't sufficient (to be rotten).
• 1 Like

  dazedandconfused-1 Member ⭐

  May 2020 258 karma

  thank you for your help!
• taschasp Alum Member Sage ⭐

  May 2020 796 karma

  @"dazedandconfused-1" said:
  thank you for your help!

  Always glad to help, and I love the username--so fitting for the LSAT isn't it? I'm going on a Zeppelin listening spree now, it's been a while.