The chairperson should not have released the Election Commission's report to the public, for the chairperson did not ...

Anita on April 26, 2018

D is different from A in that D says the decision would have been justified if the commission members would have agreed IF they had been consulted - however, this leaves open room for the chair not to ask if he already thinks/knows that they would have agreed. It also clarifies that it has to be each member.

A says that it's only justified if the majority of the commission (actively) give their consent. This seems to be the assumption in the prompt - that at least some, or likely a majority, of the commission should have consented to the report going out - that the chair was wrong in doing so because he did not consult them.

Does that help?

rmkrutz@crimson.ua.edu on April 27, 2018

Hmm I'm still not quite getting it. I think I'm confused cause D implies all of the members consent are given and A just says most?

Anita on May 1, 2018

Yes, D says all of them WOULD consent IF asked, not that they must be. This means that they don't necessarily have to give consent, either - just that they would have if they had been asked.

A says a MAJORITY MUST give consent. It takes out the unanimity and demands actual action on the part of the commissioners.

mj-thoms on September 4, 2018

Hi,

Can you please help me diagram this in terms of necessary premise?

Thank you!

Molly

Max-Youngquist on September 5, 2018

@mj-thoms this is a sufficient assumption question. In other words, we are looking for a premise that IF TRUE, makes the conclusion valid.

We are given: 1) not COM (consult other members)
C: not SHRR (should have released report)

So we are looking for a bridge to connect not COM to not SHRR. So diagrammed out (with the contrapositive):
Not COM ==> not SHRR
SHRR ==> COM

So if we assume (A), you'll see that CMOM (consult most other members) is a NECESSARY condition of SHRR. In other words, SHRR ==> CMOM. Since we know that not COM is a given premise, CMOM cannot possibly be true. Therefore, we can properly conclude not SHRR.

Note that even though (A) includes the word "most" instead of "any" like the original premise, it's OK for a sufficient assumption to be "overkill." If this was a necessary assumption question, the word "most" would've been too strong.

I hope that helps!

hannahnaylor5 on October 11, 2019

I'm sorry, I'm really lost. That explanation didn't make sense to me.

Kai1 on January 7 at 12:15AM

The explanation is really confusing, and after reading through other comments, it sounds like I'm not the only person who thinks A and D say the same thing as each other. Can we please get a better explanation on how they differ... not just capitalizing the "IF" in the question...

Kai1 on January 7 at 12:18AM

A: "only if most other members of the commission had first given their consent."
D: "only if each of the commission's members would have agreed to its being released had they been consulted."

How are those two phrases different? Both require consultation of the members and consent to release it...

Emil-Kunkin on January 8 at 08:40PM

A and D describe different things. The necessary element of A is that each member actually did consent. The necessary element of D is that they would have consented had they been asked.

The key difference is that the former requires actually consent, the latter allows the chair to not get actual consent as long as the members would not have objected.

Consider the following scenario: everyone on the committee would have agreed to release, but the chair simply chose not to ask them for fear that they would not consent, and chose to release it anyways. Under A this is not allowed but under D this is allowed.