Peguins are black and white.Some old TV shows are black and white.What can you properly infer?
erica-scottAugust 18, 2020
“Some” and “all” statements
Why can’t you take P -> B&W
and make it: b&w some P.
If you could do this and then you also have OTV some B&W you could combine the two and say: OTV some P.
Reply
Create a free account to read and
take part in forum discussions.
Thanks for the question! So actually, assuming you know that penguins exist (and in this case, we can assume that penguins exist), you can actually say that
B&W <—some—> P
In other words, some black and white things are penguins. And this makes sense: if penguins exist, and penguins are black and white, then some black and white things are penguins.
But we can’t take that and go
OTV <—some—> B&W <—some—> P OTV <—some—> P
We can’t use the transitive property with “some” statements. And this is actually a great example why. Because penguins are actually black and white, as are some old TV show programs. But are some penguins old TV shows? No, of course not, that doesn’t make any sense at all! These are referring to different, non overlapping subsets of the same group. Sure, some things that are black and white are penguins, and some are TVs, but they’re referring to two different groups that don’t intersect.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
