If a society encourages freedom of thought and expression, then, during the time when it does so, creativity will flo...
izyatJune 12, 2019
Argumnet seems valid
I am confused about this question because the argument seems to be valid.
F==> C
C==> 18th century and
F==> 18th century so shouldn't it be concluded that F==> 18th century?
The explanation discusses the first premise, but I don't think I saw it written out how the second premise couldn't be logically combined.
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If a society encourages freedom of thought and expression, then creativity will flourish in that society at that time.
SE FT and E - > CF
Not CF - > SE not FT or not E
The passage then tells us that creativity flourished (CF) in the United States during the 18th century.
It takes this information to conclude that freedom of thought must have been encouraged in the United States during the 18th century.
Without diagramming the remaining parts of the passage, we can see that this argument makes the error of simply reversing the diagram above as opposed to the required reversal and negation. This means that the passage mistakenly concludes that the sufficient condition was met based on the facts that the necessary condition was met.
Just because creativity flourished in the United States during the 18th century does not mean that it was necessarily because the society encouraged freedom of thought and expression. We know, based on the contrapositive outlined above, that if creativity does not flourish then the society either failed to encourage freedom of thought or expression but, just because creativity is flourishing this does not necessarily mean that the society encouraged these two things. There are numerous additional explanations for why creativity may have flourished in the United States during the 18th century that do not rely on the society encouraging freedom of thought and expression.
In other words, CF makes SE FT and E possible, but it does not guarantee it.
Hope this is helpful! Please let us know if you have any further questions.
