#24 - No one who works at Leila's Electronics

[Adam Tyson]

I think this is a pretty good holistic approach, pmuffley, and it shows that your grasp of conditional reasoning at an intuitive level is strong. You can probably afford to forego diagramming in certain instances like this. But when in doubt, draw it out! Don't be afraid to take a little extra time to diagram if it's complex and you're struggling to see it.

One more thing about your analysis here, and that is a caution against your use of causal terminology. The author is not arguing that a lack of a raise causes a poor performance evaluation. They are saying that not getting a raise is evidence of a poor performance evaluation. There may or may not be a causal relationship (and if there is, it's probably the other way around - the poor eval is more likely to have caused Lester to miss out on getting a raise).

Don't add in an unnecessary causal component here! It's strictly a conditional flaw, wherein the presence of one condition proves the absence of the other, but the other acts as if the absence of one thing proves the presence of the other (when in fact they could both be absent).

[pmuffley]

Thank you, Adam! I actually caught that but thought I was right when I clicked post so I appreciate you clarifying the causal relationship.