Jorge: You won't be able to write well about the rock music of the 1960s, since you were just an infant then. Roc...

Samuel on January 15, 2022

I reached the right answer through process of elimination, but I was reluctant to pick the answer for the same reason as Abigail.

@Mehran stated in the 2015 thread, in 2017, "the unstated assumption is that being an infant when rock music of the 1960s was created makes one unable to write well about it.".
However that sounds like a reworded restatement of the authors statement "You won't be able to write well about the rock music of the 1960s, since you were just an infant then"

If I lay it out as a S/N both Mehran and the author indicate the same assumption.
In terms of infants: infant -> not write ***** I -> not W
For the author, the word "since" shows the sufficient to be [an infant in 1960's] and "won't be able" indicating the necessary to be [not write well about rock music in the 1960's] .
For Mehran "being" and "makes one unable" indicates the sufficient and necessary respectively to be the same as that indicated above for the author.

So I do not see how both what Mehran stated and the authors statement are not the same assumption.

Looking at the questions explanation, " Jorge uses the premise that 60s rock music was written for the youths of that period to justify a conclusion that someone who wasn't a youth then can't write well about it", the aforementioned assumption is still expressed in the portion this explanation refers to as the conclusion. More specifically, " that someone who wasn't a youth then can't write well about it".
As a S/N, this still falls in line with the assumption.
not youth -> cant write ***** not Y -> not W
Being an infant during the 1960's means (in this context) that you are not a youth.
I -> not Y -> not W

The same question explanation above then follows with "That assumes that someone needs to be of the generation that certain culture was aimed at in order to write well about it"
From this, it appears to be stating that the assumption is the contrapositive itself.
W -> Y, since the word "needs" suggests the necessary to be the youth.

Based on above, can someone answer Abigail's question, "Any tips for how I could have made a better distinction?" since "To me, his assumption was clearly stated in his conclusion"

Jay-Etter on January 21, 2022

So the conclusion on Jorge's argument is "you won't be able to write well about the rock music of the 1960s". Why? because "you were just an infant then".
The key here is remembering that conditional reasoning requires two parts, it requires both a conditional statement (if x then y), and it requires actually have the sufficient condition (x exists, or the sufficient condition of the contrapositive which would be not y or y doesn't exist).

Here, Jorge IS telling us that his argument relies on the idea that "you were just an infant then". However, he hasn't stated a relationship between being an infant and being able to write about rock music.

For Jorge to be able to make an argument that because you're an infant you won't be able to write well about rock music of the 60s, we need two premises:
1) That you were an infant
and 2) If infant -> can't write well about rock music of the 60s.

The first premise is stated, but the second premise is just assumed. Per the second person in this thread's question (no username), I would say that "since" isn't actually indicating a conditional statement, but rather revealing a method of reasoning.

If I make the argument "this is not a plant, since it is not green", I need to assume "if plant then green". The other key is that Jorge's conclusion is NOT a general conditional statement, but is specifically that YOU can't write well about rock music. And for him to say YOU can't write well we need both a conditional (if infant -> can't write well) AND the sufficient condition (that YOU are actually an infant). That's why the conditional is assumed, and Ruth will go on to disagree with this assumed conditional via analogy. Hope this helps, feel free to follow up if you still have questions.

Samuel on January 23, 2022

@Jay Thank you for clarifying! (I am not sure why my username is not shown to you)

Ravi on February 13, 2022

Happy you got things squared away!

Ravi on February 13, 2022

Happy you got it sorted out!