- PowerScore Staff
- Posts: 1079
- Joined: Jun 26, 2013
- Mon Apr 26, 2021 5:11 pm
#86662
Hi Maya!
It's good that you're really paying attention to the formal logic! With this example, again, we want to think about what the statement actually means: "No small countries and no countries in the southern hemisphere have permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council."
Does that mean that if you are both a small country and a country in the southern hemisphere, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council? Not quite. It's really saying that If you are a small country, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and if you're a country in the southern hemisphere, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. You don't have to be both small and in the southern hemisphere to not have a seat. Either of those is sufficient to know that your country doesn't have a seat. So if you are a small country OR you are in the southern hemisphere, that's enough to know that you do not have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
You could also have diagrammed the contrapositive of this statement first: If you have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, then you are not a small country AND you are not in the southern hemisphere.
"Some" arrows aren't held to the same standard as regular conditional arrows. When you're dealing with a "some" statement, you can basically split up those ANDs however you want. If I say "Some cats and some dogs have gray fur and white paws" that would mean that some cats have gray fur, some cats have white paws, some dogs have gray fur and some dogs have white paws. We can split this final some statement up the same way.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Kelsey
It's good that you're really paying attention to the formal logic! With this example, again, we want to think about what the statement actually means: "No small countries and no countries in the southern hemisphere have permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council."
Does that mean that if you are both a small country and a country in the southern hemisphere, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council? Not quite. It's really saying that If you are a small country, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and if you're a country in the southern hemisphere, then you don't have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. You don't have to be both small and in the southern hemisphere to not have a seat. Either of those is sufficient to know that your country doesn't have a seat. So if you are a small country OR you are in the southern hemisphere, that's enough to know that you do not have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
You could also have diagrammed the contrapositive of this statement first: If you have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, then you are not a small country AND you are not in the southern hemisphere.
"Some" arrows aren't held to the same standard as regular conditional arrows. When you're dealing with a "some" statement, you can basically split up those ANDs however you want. If I say "Some cats and some dogs have gray fur and white paws" that would mean that some cats have gray fur, some cats have white paws, some dogs have gray fur and some dogs have white paws. We can split this final some statement up the same way.
Hope this helps!
Best,
Kelsey