Normal full-term babies are all born with certain instinctive reflexes that disappear by the age of two months. Becau...

risisanz March 14, 2023

All Statement Condition

Hi, I was taught in the lesson that "all" introduces a sufficient condition and the rest would be the necessary condition. However, the video shows normal full-term babies as the sufficient condition when it comes before the "all" so I'm confused as to when we would apply the rules we were taught in the lesson since it did not apply for this question. Thank you.

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Emil-Kunkin March 19, 2023

Hi, what matters is what the all applies to, not the placement in the sentence. The following statements mean the exact same thing:

All babies are cute.
babies are all cute.

In both cases, the all applies to the babies, rather than to cute things.

More generally, I would point out that conditional reasoning boils down to guarantees. A sufficient condition guarantees a necessary condition. In this case, being a baby guarantees being cute, so baby is sufficient for cute, regardless of where we place the all statement.