If you climb mountains, you will not live to a ripe old age. But you will be bored unless you climb mountains. Theref...

Maria October 9, 2019

unless signifier

In this question "unless" came before climbing mountains which i diagrammed as a necessary condition. which in the end gave me the correct answer but the wrong process to getting there. I'm not quite sure why i'm supposed to diagram climbing mountains as a sufficient here instead of necessary.

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SamA October 10, 2019

Hello @Maria,

Keep in mind that creating a contrapositive of an if/then statement maintains the exact same meaning. You may have diagrammed something differently, but you can diagram as you please as long as it is logically sound. I'll go through the premises of this question and maybe that will clear things up.

Premise: If you climb mountains (CM) you will not live to a ripe old age (not ROA)

CM - - - - - - > not ROA
ROA - - - - - > not CM (contrapositive)

Premise: You will be bored (B) unless you climb mountains (CM).

not CM - - - - - -> B
not B - - - - - - - -> CM (This is probably where you put CM as a necessary condition. Do you see how that is totally fine as long as you can create a proper contrapositive?)

Premise: If you live to a ripe old age (ROA), you will have been bored (B).
This last statement links some of our previous premises together. It is a true statement, something that we can logically conclude based on the passage.

ROA - - - - - > not CM - - - - - - > B

hfatima1 May 17, 2020

Hey, I narrowed down the two questions to C and E by the wording used. I was also able to diagram both C and E. However, I diagrammed C as:

WFC-----> not IGP
IGP ------- > not WFC (contrapositive)
not CD ------ > WFC
not WFC ------> not CD

so my contrapositive chain looked like IGP----->not WFC-----> not CD

However, in the diagram review example, she does not do not CD, instead she writes how NCD to represent neglect. Doing so, it makes a difference in the chain. Why is there a difference between NCD and not CD to the chain?

ohanamgt June 15, 2020

The thing I am learning well in these S&N questions is the "but.....unless" statements where we "negate" the sufficient to be logically sound. I was not doing that before!