#22- Moralist: A statement is wholly truthful

[ssnasir]

Hi there,

I just had a quick question about the diagram which is different from the one posted here.

I originally diagrammed the stimulus like:

Wholly truthful True
NOT intention to deceive wholly truthful

When I saw the "without" my instinct was to separate the diagrams. I apologize if this is a little dumb

Thank you,
Noor

[James Finch]

Hi SS Nasir,

While "without" is a necessary condition indicator word, it can also be used as a part of a condition, to negate it, as it is here. The key words in the stimulus are actually "only if" and "and;" in this case the "and" overrides the "without" as a conditional indicator. Instead the diagram should look like:

Wholly Truthful True + Intended Deception

So both truth and lack of intentional deception are necessary conditions for a statement to be entirely truthful.

Hope this clears things up!

[cinnamonpeeler]

Answer choice (A) concludes that Ted's statement is WT, which is an immediate red flag, as WT is not a necessary condition in any of the given conditional relationships and therefore cannot be concluded no from the information in the stimulus.

I got this question right and I do believe that I understand it. However, I just want to clarify this point above. In principle questions with sufficient and necessary conditions, can we only draw valid conclusions about the necessary conditions of the statements? As soon as the sufficient conditions are met, we also know that the necessary conditions must occur, must have occurred, or will occur in the future.

Thus, in this question, we can only draw a few, limited conclusions: (1) someone or some statement is truthful and have no intention to deceive, (2) someone or some statement is not wholly truthful, (3) someone is lying or something is a lie, (4) someone did not clarify and someone did not have intention to deceive. These are the necessary conditions of the two conditional statements given by the stimulus, along with the necessary conditions of the contrapositives of those statements. Is this correct?

It follows that we cannot draw any conclusions about something being not a lie or something being wholly truthful. Is this correct? Would this then be good enough reason to immediately eliminate answer choices (A), (B), and (E)? I actually went into each answer choice to examine the details but I'm just wondering if I would be able to eliminate based on the conclusions that each answer choice purports to have successfully drawn, given that we may not have enough information to actually draw those conclusions.

And, what has confused me somewhat, is this: Am I making an unwarranted inference if I conclude from the first conditional statement (i.e., wholly truthful true and made without intended deception) whether or not something is wholly truthful? In other words, if an answer choice tells me that if a statement is true and that it is without an intention to deceive, and I concluded that the statement must be wholly truthful, I would be making a Mistaken Reversal, correct? I know how to pick out Mistaken Reversals and Mistaken Negations in other question types, but for some reason, with Principle questions, I've found myself guilty of making Mistaken Reversals. Could someone clarify this for me?

[Adam Tyson]

Your reasoning here all looks good, cinnamonpeeler! Nice work breaking down what you can and cannot prove based on these conditional statements. You can prove that a necessary condition does occur, or that a sufficient condition does not occur, and that's all. And your analysis of a Mistaken Reversal at the end of your post is perfect. Good work!