#21- The new agriculture bill will almost surely fail to

[Adam Tyson]

I'll refer you back to my earlier answers in this thread, Lynn, and say that we really should not be talking about contrapositives here because this is not a true conditional argument. It's about probability rather than certainty, while conditional reasoning is all about certainty (the necessary condition is, well, necessary, not just probable).

Answer E is quite the trap, but it's not wrong for any conditional reason, but because it fails to address the likelihood of a bill that lacks that support passing. It's possible that while most of the bills that pass have some support, it could be that ALL of the bills that lack support also pass, and that they are just in the minority. What if every bill that lacked the support of any leader had always been passed into law, but there just hadn't been very many of them? That would mean that this bill actually looks very likely to pass, weakening, rather than strengthening, the argument.

We need to know the statistics for bills like this one, rather than the statistics for bills that have been passed or that have had some support (and are thus unlike this bill). Answer A is the one that tells us the odds for bills like the one under discussion, and it tells us that the odds aren't good.

[sunshine123]

Hello,

The conditional statement we need is : if leaders of all major parties DO NOT support the bill --------> bill does not pass. Previously, a proctor mentioned that the contrapositive of the sufficient condition yields the statement: leaders of ALL major parties DO support the bill. Why is it the contrapositive of that statement is not : NOT ALL leaders of major parties do not support the bill? More generally, when do we know to negate the quantity statement in a statement and when not to?

Thank you,
Sunshine

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Sunshine,

As Adam explained above, this isn't quite a real conditional because it deals with probability, not certainty.

It's better to think here about what the support is and what the conclusion is. This argument concludes that the bill will almost certainly fail, and it supports that conclusion based on the fact that the leaders of all major parties have said they oppose the bill.

We want something that links the opposition by the leaders to the likelihood of failure of the bill. Answer choice (A) is the answer choice that links a lack of support by leaders of all parties to the historical likelihood of failure.

The "leaders of all major parties oppose it" is equivalent to the idea that "not supported by even one leader of a major party." We don't need a contrapositive at all here. We just need to know what concepts are equivalent.

Hope that helps!