#21 - A society in which there are many crimes, such as

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,


I had a quick question, so for answer choice D (the correct answer) I diagrammed it as:
crimes<--some-->laws however, in the stimulus we had crimes-->laws,
Why is it that we can conclude that? is it because all can mean some?

Also, I know that for answer choice E, all can mean many, that is why I did not understand why it cannot be correct. Am I wrong to think that all could mean many?

Thanks


Ellen

[David Boyle]

Dear Powerscore,


I had a quick question, so for answer choice D (the correct answer) I diagrammed it as:
crimes<--some-->laws however, in the stimulus we had crimes-->laws,
Why is it that we can conclude that? is it because all can mean some?

Also, I know that for answer choice E, all can mean many, that is why I did not understand why it cannot be correct. Am I wrong to think that all could mean many?

Thanks


Ellen

Hello Ellen,

Is this q. 3 of the homework conditional reasoning questions in chapter 2? If so: as for answer E, no, many and all are not synonymous--at least not necessarily. (Yeah, "all" does mean a lot, as in "many", but...)
And E may not be true for question 3. What if, say, there is only one law in a society--maybe a dumb law like, "It's illegal to breathe"? That one law (not "many" laws) would sure get violated a lot!! so there'd be many crimes, huh? even without many laws.
But D is nice and flexible. You could have one law, violated once, so one crime total. Or a zillion laws, each violated a zillion times, for a total of a zillion-squared crimes.
By the way, "all" can indeed be one meaning of "some", as you were saying above. Though that's not needed to answer the question, by the way (i.e., it's not necessary to say that ALL things are illegal, and violated ALL the time, creating an infinite number of crimes maybe?).

Hope this helps,
David

[ellenb]

Thanks David,


I actually did not mean for all to be synonymous, I meant that all could mean many and it could also mean some. Which for the correct answer it works since if:

all rabbits eat carrots

than we can assume to be correct that some rabbits eat carrots.
or we can also assume that

many rabbits eat carrots.

All-->many--->some (since many means a few or more and some means at least one)

Please let me know,

Regards,

Ellen

[David Boyle]

Thanks David,


I actually did not mean for all to be synonymous, I meant that all could mean many and it could also mean some. Which for the correct answer it works since if:

all rabbits eat carrots

than we can assume to be correct that some rabbits eat carrots.
or we can also assume that

many rabbits eat carrots.

All-->many--->some (since many means a few or more and some means at least one)

Please let me know,

Regards,

Ellen

Hello Ellen,

Yes, if all A do B, then many, most, or some (all subsets of "all") should be able to do B.

Hope that helps,
David

[ellenb]

So going back to my original question:

If Laws-->Crimes (A-->B)

than it is fair to say when I have:

many laws--> many crimes (many A-->many B) answer choice C should be right?

Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

Maybe I can help? I think your analysis has two small flaws in it - a Mistaken Negation and a Vague or Uncertain Use of a Term. Let me explain:

First, the stimulus has lots of distractions in it, but one nice conditional statement: "A society that has no laws has no crimes." That statement is diagrammed as L -> C. It looks to me like you mistakenly negated that in your post, saying L -> C. Important difference! Using what you know about conditional reasoning you could eliminate answer C as being a variant on that mistaken negation, and proving answer D as a valid contra-positive.

The other flaw is in the way you are using the word "crime." In the stimulus, that word is used not to mean that something is made illegal (it is a crime to commit murder because there is a law against it) but, rather, to describe the actual act of criminal activity (many crimes means many instances of the crime actually being committed). Using the author's definition of crime, you can have a society that has lots of laws, resulting in lots of actions being defined as crimes, but have no actual crime (if nobody breaks those laws). So one law doesn't mean one crime, some laws don't mean some crimes, and many laws doesn't mean many crimes. See the difference? Answer D uses crimes the way the author did - if a crime is committed, it is proof that that society must have some (at least one) law.

Hope I cleared things up. Good luck tomorrow! Don't study too hard!

[ellenb]

Starting to make sense,however, what about E. I meant to have that answer when I said many:

Many Crimes-->Many Laws

From the stimulus we know that:

Crimes-->Laws

So, we can infer Many Crimes-->Many Laws?


thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

Not necessarily. David put it nicely with his suggestion of just one law, making it illegal to breathe, leading to many crimes (because everyone would break that one law all day, every day). Remember, crime here means the actual commission of a criminal act, and doesn't mean merely some activity has been defined as criminal or illegal. Many crimes (actual commissions of crimes) could indicate just one law.

Also, try applying the uniqueness principle here - if E is true, doesn't it force D to also be true? You can't have two correct responses here, so from a purely tactical standpoint it wouldn't make sense to select answer E, because then you would have to select D also. Focus your efforts on determining how to select the credited response, rather than on how to defend a different response, and you will do much better on the test.

[ellenb]

I think I will stick with the uniqueness principle, where I have A-->B and
Many A--> Many B than if we have as an answer A--some-->B than, it makes sense that both of them cannot be right. So, I will just have to pay attention to getting the right answer right.
And also the stimulus seems to have a wide scope, that is why some makes more sense.
So, my mistake was when I saw C-->L to mean that all crimes-->all laws, when it could actual mean one crime-->many laws. So, I guess I took it too formulaic without thinking about the possibility that I could have many laws and only one crime or even no crimes committed?


Thanks in advance!

Ellen

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Ellen,

When you see the diagram of A B, what does that actually mean? It means that "All As are Bs." But, does "all" have to equal "many"? No, and that's where you are running into some issues. It could be that there is just 1 A, or maybe there are 3 As, which no one would say is "many" (but they would say that is "some"). On the other hand, "all" could mean 25,000.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!