10. QUESTIONS FOR ORIGINAL THOUGHT AND INVESTIGATION.
(1) Give illustrations of arguments which are valid in form but invalid in meaning. Explain.
(2) May an argument be valid in meaning but invalid in form? Exemplify.
(3) Put a simple problem in arithmetic in syllogistic form and show that the minor premise naturally comes first.
(4) In the practice of law is there any custom analogous to giving the author the benefit of the doubt in logical argumentation?
(5) Test in detail the following arguments:
(1) “All wise presidents strive to give heed to the demands of the people, but this president has not done so.”
(2) “The existence of God is not universally believed, hence it cannot be true.”
(3) “The institution has prospered under the present régime therefore why change it?”
(4) “The man is guilty because seven out of the nine witnesses so testified.”
(5) “I know three men who cleared not less than ten thousand dollars in this business; and why cannot I do as much?”
(6) “Only members may vote and, since you are not a member, you will not be allowed to vote.” Change the exclusive in this argument in the two ways suggested in Chapter 8, [page 126]. Test the argument in both cases.
(7) Show by illustration that the quantity sign “all” when used with “not” may in some cases mean “no” and in others “some-not”.
(8) Make two selections from some poet of authority representing arguments with an inverted premise.
(9) Select from news papers three arguments which seem to illustrate the fallacy of four terms but which in reality do not. Explain.
(10) Wherein could the elliptical proposition lead to error?
(11) Put the following in syllogistic form and test:
(1) “That persons may reason without language is proven by the circumstances that infants reason and yet have no language.”
(2) “The scriptures cannot come from God because they contain some things which cannot be comprehended by man.”
(3) “When Columbus was sailing the ocean in search of a new world, he fell in with a flock of land birds and concluded that he could not be far from land.”
(4) “Bolingbroke in arguing against the truth of the Christian religion shows that the Christian religion has bred contentions.” “Burke answered him by showing that civil government had bred contentions.”