Deductive Logic class... this one has me stumped

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We took a practice quiz last Thursday. It wasn’t collected, we just went over it in class and discussed the questions that people had problems with, etc. It was broken into two sections. In the first section you had to decide if the text presented was an argument or a nonargument, and if it was an argument, what its conclusion was. The second half of the quiz was determining if arguments were inductive or deductive, and strong/weak valid/invalid, but that isn’t the part that has me confused.

For the most part I did well on the practice quiz. However, this one question still has me in a state of non comprehension, which bothers the hell out of me, especially when it’s with school. I asked the questions in the class and the professor tried to answer them, but I still don’t get it. Here is the problem:

“Economics is the study of choice under conditions of scarcity. As individuals, and as a society, we have unlimited desires for goods and services. Unfortunately, the resources needed to produce those goods and services are scarce. Therefore, we must choose which desires to satisfy and how to satisfy them. Economics provides the tools that explain those choices.”

To ME, it seems like it goes like this (I’ve made my comments in red for excitement value):

Economics is the study of choice under conditions of scarcity. - Baseline definition of “economics”
*As individuals, and as a society, we have unlimited desires for goods and services. *- Issue 1 defining terms
Unfortunately, the resources needed to produce those goods and services are scarce. - Issue 2
Therefore, we must choose which desires to satisfy and how to satisfy them. - The problem between the two issues which fleshes out the original definition by giving a relevant example of what “choice under conditions of scarcity” means.
Economics provides the tools that explain those choices. - An expansion on the definition of “economics” which uses the examples for further clarity.

To me this makes it a definition/example and not an argument. According to the teacher, it is an argument with the conclusion being “Therefore, we must choose which desires to satisfy and how to satisfy them.” (And the things I pointed out as “issues” he claims are the premises of the argument.)

Me no understand. If you removed the first and last sentences, which define economics, I can see it being an argument for the necessity of some way to resolve the discrepancy between the unlimited desire and the scarcity of resources. However, the statements being there, it simply serves to explain what it is that economics’ purpose is, and thus seems to me to be a definition.

Can someone 'splain to me better?

2

Just because you stick a definition in front of an argument, it doesn’t remove that the rest of it is an argument. Imagine if it had said “Hospital management is the study of treatment of medical disorders. As individuals, and as a society, we suffer from many diseases and ailments; everyone has some disease or another. Unfortunately, we do not all have the personal ability to treat ourselves, since we’re not all doctors. Therefore, we must design a system of publicly funded healthcare to treat us. Hospital management provides the tools that guide such a design”. Something has been snuck in here, you see? It looks like a definition, but it ends up making policy recommendations which may not in fact be justified, having moved to them from assertions which are only knowable empirically, rather than tautologously true.

That having been said, it’s kinda sketchy. I don’t really think your analysis of this as having the flavor of a definition is wrong, per se. But it does gloss over the fact that that this “definition” makes claims which could potentially be false (maybe we don’t have unlimited desires. Maybe resources aren’t scarce. Maybe we don’t need to choose which desires to satisfy.) To the extent that those claims are being made, they are premises and conclusions of an argument.

3

It seems to me more like this:

“The cotton gin is a device for processing cotton. Cotton has sticky seeds that must be removed. Removing the seeds by hand is laborious. Therefore a machine that makes the task less labor intensive was invented. The cotton gin is a tool that accomplishes the task of removing seeds from cotton fibers without using as much manpower.”

I don’t see that as any kind of argument, just an explanation of the problem that the cotton gin solves. The economics one just looks to me like it’s explaining the problems that economics is designed to solve. I guess some of the premises may be false, but false premises aren’t what determines whether something is an argument or not. You can have a perfectly valid argument that has totally false premises.

(I’m not arguing with you–I’m seriously trying to understand this from the way my teacher is explaining it, and just trying to elaborate more fully on what my brain currently sees so that someone can show me more specifically where I’m derailing…)

4

Look at it this way: in the original example, what does “Therefore, we must choose which desires to satisfy and how to satisfy them” mean? It means something like “Given the two facts I just mentioned, it logically follows that we must choose which desires to satisfy and how to satisfy them.”

I.e., that sentence is asking us to accept one new claim on the grounds of the two previous assertions. Well, that’s rather like an argument, isn’t it? Asking people to accept new claims on the grounds of previous assertions?

5

The argument is quite short and there’s a bunch of extraneous junk. It helps if you prune that back.

  1. We desire unlimited stuff.

  2. Stuff is limited.

  3. Therefore, we have to choose which desires to satisfy.

I don’t think the conclusion follows. What follows is just that not all our desires will be satisfied. Whether we choose which to satisfy or not is irrelevant.

6

Yeah I can see your point, but where I get snagged up is from all the nonarguments he gave as examples in class that seem like they do the same thing. I can’t remember any offhand, of course, but there were a lot.

7

The conclusion sounds suspect. We don’t *choose *desires.

FYI: I got an E in Economics 101. I got a C in Intro Logic.

An individual can have unlimited desires and society can have limited goods and services.

8

The first sentence is the thesis. It’s a statement of the premise to be argued for. Basically it’s saying “I will argue that economics really boils down to X.”

The argument is then presented.

The premise is then restated as the conclusion.

It’s an argument for a way to perceive economics, not a definition.

9

Except that our professor specifically said [in lecture, discussing all of this stuff, not in discussing this particular question] that if there is a thesis statement, then it is an expository passage and NOT an argument. Is he wrong?

10

It doesn’t say we choose desires, it says we have to choose which desires to satisfy.

That’s exactly what the thesis says. Our desires are unlimited. Our resources are not. Therefore we have to choose what desires to satisfy.

11

No, he’s right. The first sentence in your example is not technically part of the argument. The thesis is just a statement upfront of what you intend to argue for.

For instance, the first sentence of your essay can be “Dogs are better than cats,” That’s the thesis, It isn’t proven yet. It’s not an argument in itslf. You’re just telling people what you’re going to prove. The part that comes after that is the argument.

You’re just saying “I will prove X.” It’s not an argument itself. You’re just saying what you’re going to argue FOR.

12

His lecture stated that if a paragraph started with a thesis statement, that the paragraph as a whole was expository and was not an argument. I had a long discussion with him about this in class because it didn’t make sense to me but he seemed pretty adamant. He says that elaborating and giving evidence or whatever to support a thesis statement is expository or descriptive and is NOT an argument.

13

I’d like to see examples that he gave. It’s hard to say much or explain the differences when we can’t see the items we’ve got the differences between.

14

Well he may be making some kind of formal academic distinction between the thesis and the statement of the premise with the argument, but the paragraph in the OP is an argument which includes a statement of the premise. It’s not a definition.

One thing I should point out that I’m assuming the instructor is using the word “definition” as it applies specifically in logic. He’s not talking about dictionary definitions.

A logic definition refers to using a word or symbol to refer to something else. This can and does include lexical definitions (i.e. definitions of words), but those definitions are supposed to be accepted as the word is actually used, They’re not supposed to REdefine anything. The paragraph in question is not trying to give a standard, lexical definition of “economics,” it’s making an argument for a perception of the science.

15

Yeah I know I wish I could remember any of them. :confused:

16

I lean toward the OP’s interpretation.

If this were discussed in a course on economics, I might not. Economists probably have long debates about what they do, but if you look at it with the mindset “I’m sitting in Econ 101,” you’re perfectly content to accept some basic premises and explanations. Advanced econ, well, that might be the paragraph heard 'round the world, the derring-do of some upstart, stating that, OMG!

How 'bout ethology? There’s a topic that I bet most people never heard of. If I’m the writer, I think I better introduce it because I don’t assume everybody in the class is familiar with it. Or maybe they’ll confuse it with something similar-sounding. Or maybe they kindasorta know but want to be sure they’re on the right page. Why would someone who is totally new to a subject, on hearing the definition for the first time, leap up and say, “NO! THAT’S WAAAAAY OFF!”

Then I would go into a few clarifying sentences for the reader. Why would I persuade someone what ethology’s definition should be before they know anything at all about it? And the class in deductive reasoning is likely open to people of many different backgrounds, so that’s all the more reason to start from a common definition.

The few times when I had trouble with profs in college was when they had little bitty penises. OK, no, not really (I only suspect, cannot confirm). In one case, if you questioned the guy in front of the class he got uber defensive, like his credentials were under attack or something. Even if asked about something really questionable, he_just_wasn’t_going_to_be_wrong_in_front_of_the_class.

Maybe this prof is too lazy to find a clearer example. Or, if he’s right, maybe he should have put this really difficult one later in the semester, after the class has developed a better feel for it.

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Hiya Opal!:smiley:

17

The examples are pulled from a test bank and I don’t think that he wrote them, so I doubt it is laziness. I also think that if I made a strong enough case for my reasoning, and demonstrated that I knew the material he was testing and just disagreed with this case, he would be willing to give credit for the problem (that scenario came up as a hypothetical in class with another iffy example out of the book).

18

Pulled from a test bank=convenient for him, not something he considered and crafted personally. Test banks are not God and probably contain some weak items as well. If the test bank said “This is an example of a non-argument,” maybe he’d defend that rigorously instead.

But, if he’s willing to grade on your reasoning, that’s :cool:.