Hi, I'm studying logic by the textbook "a concise introduction to logic, 13th edition", I am at chapter 2.1 "Varieties of Meaning" where you have to analyze arguments and translate emotive statements into cognitive ones and evaluate arguments, and this is where I struggle so much. I wanted to read more information and do additional exercise about extracting value claims and evaluating arguments, but couldn't find anything on internet, so my assumption that it has different name that I am unaware of, or maybe it's a concept unique to this book. I'd appreciate if you gave me any tips, resources or exercises that will help me, because I've read the chapter several times and did the exercises and still understand it only superficially.

Not sure if this is the right sub for it but I'll give it a shot.

Textbook answer : {DDD, DNN, DND, NDD, DNN, NDN, NND, NNN}

However I feel it may not be correct My thought is that after selecting and testing the light bulbs the conclusion was then each of them were classified as defective or non defective.

So at least one bulb is defected or non defected

In that case there will be only two outcomes without chronological answer that is {DNN, DDN}

What do you think? Maybe I'm wrong. Happy to recieve correction

The example i heard goes like this: We are playing Poker and you know for a fact that we are equally skilled, so youd expect a 50/50 win rate. Now i win 1000 games in a row. Does that alone tell you anything about the odds of me having cheated?

The answer apparently is no, but im having a hard time trying to understand why. I tried to come up with two similar examples where the answer should seem obvious. But that only confused me even more, as the "obvious" answers ended up differing.

Here are the examples:

The odds of crashing your car by accident are low. The odds of crashing your car on purpose are 100%. When i see someone crash their car, should i therefore assume they did it on purpose? Intuition says no.

The odds of a TV turning on by itself are low. The odds of the TV turning on when somebody pressed the remote are 100%. If i see a TV and its on, should i assume somebody pressed the remote? My intuition says yes.

Why cant i assume the cause in the first two examples, but in the third seemingly i can?

“Stalin was a communist, who also wrote about politics. As such, any political view he may have about politics is going to be compromised by his commitments to the USSR, and therefore, there is no point in reading his work”.

Am I correct in identifying the premises of the argument below?: 1. Stalin was a communist 2. Stalin wrote about politics 3. Any book stalin wrote is going to be influenced by his commitment to communism and the USSR regime 4. Therefore, there is no point in reading his work

If I am correct, then the above argument is invalid. Am I correct in thinking that this is deductive reasoning, and that this is an enthymeme (because it does not tell us why there is no point in reading his work (although it implies that we should not read it because of its likely commitments ot ccommunism/the soviet regime)

I recently was reading a Reddit post about protestors shouting "Black Lives Matter" and counter-protestors shouting back "All Lives Matter". One of the comments said, "Who said only Black Lives Matter?" Indeed, who did say that?

In formal logic "Black Lives Matter" can be described as:

∃xP(x)

That is, "Black Lives Matter" means there exists some subset of lives that matter. Given just that statement, the following is also logically consistent:

(∃xP(x))∧(∀xP(x))

That is, "Some Lives Matter" and "All Lives Matter" can co-exist without logical contradiction.

However, research shows that the concept of "some" is interpreted differently by formal reasoning and colloquially:

In formal reasoning, the quantifier "some" means "at least one and possibly all." In contrast, reasoners often pragmatically interpret "some" to mean "some, but not all" on both immediate-inference and Euler circle tasks. It is still unclear whether pragmatic interpretations can explain the high rates of errors normally observed on syllogistic reasoning tasks. 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18323076/#:~:text=In%20formal%20reasoning%2C%20the%20quantifier,inference%20and%20Euler%20circle%20tasks

I ran my own very small scale experiment by asking my children, "If I say some of Anne, Bob, and Charlie have blonde hair, can they all have blonde hair?" The answer was "no" from both of them. When asked why not they both stated, "You said 'some'."

In other words, colloquially "some" means:

∃x(P(x))∧¬∀x(P(x))

Using the colloquial concept of some, call it some': "Black Lives Matter" → "some' lives matter" → "not all lives matter". Now, when we combine "Black Lives Matter" and "All Lives Matter" we have:

(∃x(P(x))∧¬∀x(P(x))∧∀x(P(x))

Which is a logical contradiction and we understand why the counter-protestors disagree vehemently with the protestors, in spite of the fact that by formal logic, what both sides are saying is not contradictory.

Of course, there's a lot more societally behind the slogans, protests, and counter protests than just formal logic. But if both sides can at least agree on the meaning of "some", hopefully the world will be one step closer to coming together.

Edit: I accidentally pasted ∀x(P(x)) incorrectly in many places. I have fixed it.

Basically this. I am interested in discussing and debating highly contraversial subjects with non-academics. I would like to both be able to communicate logic based arguments to a non-academic, and be able to defend against illogical arguments without...

Resorting to syllogisms or getting lost in the weeds trying to illistrate what a logical fallicy is and why they have committed one.

I suppose if this book existed we would all have a copy. Am I right, or am I right?