vkremez Wrote:"A person without morals is a person without a basis for judgement, and having positive role models is the only way to achieve morals."
I know that "without" indicates the "if not" condition, or negates the sufficient...
Can you please help me translate this into the formal logic??
The right answer: "Having a basis for judgement is not possible without positive role models"
Hey, there.
If you have a sentence that just says "A is B", or "It is A to be B" then you get
A -> B
So "a person without morals"
is "a person without a basis for judgment" translates to
~Morals --> ~Basis for Judgment
i.e., "if you don't have morals, then you don't have a basis for judgment".
Sentences of this form:
The only way to be A is to be B
Being B is the only way to be A.
You're A only if you're B
Only if you're B, are you A
Only B's are A.
You can't be A unless you're B.
Being A requires being B
In order to have A, you must have B.
B is a prerequisite for A.
Having A is not possible without B.
would all be diagrammed
A --> B
There are some structural shortcuts we can/should memorize, such as "only" and "only if" always act like the arrow and come immediately before the Necessary idea.
However, "the only" has a different rule. It comes before the Sufficient. (This is a much more rare formulation, so knowing that "only / only if = arrow" is a very useful trick).
What all those aforementioned formulations have in common is that they sound like they're saying that something is REQUIRED for something else. Re-read that list and see if you can "feel" how every formulation is saying that "B" is required. The REQUIRED thing goes on the RIGHT (it's the Necessary idea).
So "having positive role models" is the only way "to achieve morals".
"Having positive role models" is the only way? Huh, sounds like it's required then. Thus, it goes on the right.
Achieve Morals --> Have positive role models.
i.e. "If you achieve morals, then you have positive role models"
"Achieving morals requires that you have positive role models"
"You can't achieve morals without having positive role models"
etc.
Our job would be to look at these two conditionals (and their contrapositives) and see whether they chain together.
Indeed they can. We have
~Have positive role models --> ~Achieve Morals
And previously, we had
~Morals --> ~Basis for Judgment
So chaining them together we get:
~Have pos. role models -> ~Morals -> ~Basis for Judgment
It pays to consider the contrapositive of this chain as well
Basis for Judgment --> Morals --> Have pos. role models
The correct answer said:
"Having a basis for judgement is not possible without positive role models"
We might "feel" that as "Oh, positive role models sound like they're REQUIRED. Hence, they go on the right"
Basis for judgment --> pos. role models
Or we might just see the causal flow of "without positive role models, a basis for judgment is not possible" and symbolize it as
~pos. role models --> ~Basis for judgment
As you can see, a good balance of knowing structural triggers but also being able to either feel which idea brings about the other, or which idea is required for the other, will often give us an intuitive way of setting up the correct conditional order.
Hope this helps. Let me know if you have questions.
i.e. ~Basis for judgment --> ~po
