Researcher: We have found that some cases of high blood pressure can be treated effectively with medicine. Since it ...

Ashley-Tien-2 October 10, 2018

I have so much trouble with sufficient and necessary assumption questions; what can I do to make my accuracy better? I look for the conclusion, but am often unable to see the gaps

Ashley-Tien-2 October 18, 2018

Could someone reply to my message?

shunhe January 11, 2020

Hi @Ashley-Tien-2,

Thanks for the question. We know that some cases of high blood pressure can be treated effectively with medicine. We know that any illness caused by stress can only be treated by reducing stress. We thus conclude that some cases of high blood pressure can’t be caused by stress. Let’s diagram this out.

HBP = high blood pressure
TEM = treated effectively with medicine
ICST = illness caused by stress treatable
RS = reduction of stress

P1: HBP —some—> TEM
P2: ICST —> RS

C: HBP —some—> ~ICS

It would be nice if we had some premise linking TEM and TRS—treating stress and treating medicine, in other words. We need to know that stress can’t be treated by medicine. Otherwise, we could have medicine that reduces stress, and those cases of high blood pressure could be caused by stress. This is what (E) tells us. (E) tells us

TEM —> ~RS

In other words, medicine doesn’t reduce stress. If we negate (E), then the medicine could reduce stress, and then the conclusion wouldn’t necessarily follow like we deduced earlier. Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions you might have.