Politician: Unless our nation redistributes wealth, we will be unable to alleviate economic injustice and our curren...
sharpen7March 9, 2018
Questions
1. Why did Mehran negate IEI in the first sufficient condition?
2. How did he know to connect the contra of second premise and not IEI -> RW of first premise?
3. Application of unless rule: I originally negated each condition and wrote and....now I know unless when negating an and becomes or and or becomes and. How do we avoid misinterpreting rules?
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@sharpen7 please make sure you are reading the other threads as your questions here have already been asked and answered.
Here is the breakdown of this question:
P1: "Unless our nation redistributes wealth, we will be unable to alleviate economic injustice and our current system will lead inevitably to intolerable economic inequities."
"Unless" introduces the necessary condition and the negation of the other part of the sentence is the sufficient condition. So the necessary condition here is "our nation redistributes wealth:"
==> NRW
The negation of the other part of the sentence, i.e. "we will be unable to alleviate economic injustice and our system will lead inevitably to intolerable economic inequities," is our sufficient condition (remember when negated "and" becomes "or"):
AEI = able to alleviate economic injustice not IEI = will not lead inevitably to intolerable economic inequities
P1: AEI or not IEI ==> NRW not NRW ==> not AEI & IEI
P2: "If the inequities become intolerable, those who suffer from the injustice will resort to violence to coerce social reform."
SIRV = resort to violence to coerce social reform
P2: IEI ==> SIRV not SIRV ==> not IEI
P3: "It is our nation's responsibility to do whatever is necessary to alleviate conditions that would otherwise give rise to violent attempts at social reform."
Our correct answer is answer choice (B), i.e. "It is our nation's responsibility to redistribute wealth." How do we conclude this?
Well, P3 states that it is our nation's responsibility to do whatever is needed to alleviate conditions that would give rise to violence.
From the contrapositive of P2 we know that if those who suffer from injustice will not resort to violence, then the inequities have not become intolerable.
The sufficient conditions of P1 are AEI or not IEI. Thus, we can connect the contrapositive of P2 to the second part of P1 to conclude that the nation redistributes wealth, like so:
Not SIRV ==> not IEI ==> NRW
The nation redistributing its wealth is, therefore, the ultimate necessary condition to make sure that those who suffer from injustice will not resort to violence. Thus, since it is the nation's responsibility to take whatever measures necessary to alleviate conditions that would give rise to violence, it is the nation's responsibility to redistribute wealth.
Hope this helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
neel116July 11, 2018
on the sufficient condition of P1, why is it not "notAEI and IEI" instead of "AEI or notIEI"
