Political theorist: The chief foundations of all governments are the legal system and the police force; and as there...

Irina on October 11, 2019

@Jwebb,

This is an interesting question stem - "sound" argument has a specific definition in logic, which means an argument where all the premises are true and the conclusion is true as well. It looks like the question merely asks us to determine if the argument is "valid" instead, if the conclusion follows logically from the premises. That's just a side note, but I could see how this question stem could be confusing for a logic student.

We would diagram the argument the following way:

There cannot be a good legal system where the police are not well-paid. In other words, if the police are not well paid, there is no good legal system. We could also rephrase it as 'there is no good legal system unless the police are well-paid."

~WP -> ~GLS
GLS -> WP

It follows where the police are well-paid there will be a good legal system.

WP -> GLS

This is an invalid argument that commits a fallacy of mistaken reversal. A well-paid police force is a necessary not a sufficient condition for a good legal system.

#JW on October 12, 2019

Definitely saw that with the question stem. I'm kind of at the point of just trying to make sure I can diagram S and N conditional statements that don't necessarily jump out at you with the basic conditional verbiage/sentence structure learned in the lesson. Thank you.