Logic Test One

Logic Test One

NAME:___________________________________

Due Date: Monday, February 13. Any tests not turned in at the beginning of class will be late and points will be deducted. Late tests will be accepted up to four days late with 5 points deducted for each day late.

I. Which of the following passages contains an argument? Indicate which passages contain an argument by writing “yes” in the blank to the left. Write “no” for passages that do not contain an argument. If the argument does contain an argument, write down the conclusion in the space provided. (2 points each)

1. __________ Will a beverage begin to cool more quickly in the freezer or in the regular part of the refrigerator? Well, of course it’ll cool faster in the freezer! There are lots of people who don’t understand anything at all about physics and who think things may begin to cool faster in the fridge. But they’re sadly mistaken.

2. __________ Right now there are as many as half a million military-style assault guns in the hands of private citizens in the United States. These small, light, easy to handle weapons are exemplified by the Israeli UZI, the American MAC-10 and AR-15, the KG-99. All of these are sophisticated weapons manufactured for the single purpose of killing human beings in large numbers very quickly.

3. __________ That American schools have finally been integrated is a myth. The vast majority of African American students attend schools whose student bodies are almost entirely African American. And most whites attend schools where only a tiny minority are African American, Latino, or Asian.

4. __________ “All the major Modern movements except for De Stijl, Dada, Constructivism, and Surrealism began before the First World War, and yet they all seem to come out of the 1920s. Why? Because it was in the 1920s that Modern Art achieved social chic in Paris, London, Berlin, and New York. Smart people talked about it, wrote about it, enthused over it, and borrowed from it.” —Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word

5. __________ “The argument advanced at a recent government hearing—that because we will not be dependent on plutonium for more than a few hundred years it ‘will not be an important problem indefinitely’—entirely misses the point. Though we may rely on plutonium for only a relatively brief period, the plutonium produced during that period may be with us indefinitely, and it may jeopardize the lives of many times the number of generations that profit from its use.”

—Ronald M. Green, “International Justice and Environmental Responsibility”

6. __________ “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.”

—John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

7. __________ A recent study shows that you are three times as likely to suffer a heart attack just after you wake up in the morning than at any other time. It is theorized that this may be due to the blood’s having a greater tendency to clot when you first wake up.

8. __________ “In time I began to recognize that all of these smaller complaints about rigidity, emotional suffocation, the tortured logic of the law were part of a more fundamental phenomenon in the law itself. Law is at war with ambiguity, with uncertainty. In the courtroom, the adversary system—plaintiff against defendant—guarantees that someone will always win, someone lose. No matter if justice is evenly with each side, no matter if the issues are indefinite and obscure, the rule of law will be declared.”

— One L, Scott Turow

9. __________ Imagine yourself naked, without weapons, and running after a deer. If you were to catch this deer how would you eat it? Humans are not equipped with the canine teeth in order to eat meat without tools. A carnivore’s teeth are long and sharp, and its jaws move up and down. Humans, by contrast, use their molars to crush and grind their food. Have you ever noticed that so many Americans are overweight and unhealthy? That’s because they eat meat.

10. __________ “The recent failure of a Drake University student to halt his former girlfriend’s plan for an abortion focuses light on a seldom considered situation: While a woman’s right to an abortion should not be weakened, the idea of ‘father’s rights’ raised in this case should be discussed.”

— The Daily Iowan

II. Standardize the following arguments according to Govier’s recommendations, numbering the premises and conclusion(s), adding implicit premises and conclusion if needed. Type your answers beneath each passage. (10 points each)

1. Once we understand more clearly what human means, we can see that the view that abortion is wrong because it involves the killing of a human being is a mistaken view. A fetus is only in the same sense that it is a member of the biological species Homo sapiens. But it is not as a biological organism that humans have a right to life. Rather, humans possess full and equal moral rights only as persons—that is, as members of the moral community. A fetus is so unlike a person that it has no significant right to life. It follows, therefore, that a woman’s right to obtain an abortion is absolute. Abortion is morally justified at any stage of fetal development.

2. From a letter to the editor: “Recently the California Highway Patrol stopped me at a drunk-drive checkpoint. Now, I don’t like drunk drivers any more than anyone else. I certainly see why the police find the checkpoint system effective. But I think our right to move about freely is much more important. If the checkpoint system continues, then next there will be checkpoints for drugs, seat belts, infant car seats, drivers’ licenses. We will regret it later if we allow the system to continue.”

3. We must stop treating juveniles differently from adult offenders. Justice demands it. Justice implies that people should be treated equally. Besides, the social effects of pampering juvenile offenders has sinister social consequences. The record shows that juveniles have been treated leniently for offenses have subsequently committed serious crimes.

4. “And we thought we’d heard it all. Now the National Rifle Association wants the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the ban on private ownership of fully automatic machine guns.

“As the nation’s critics reel under staggering murder totals, as kids use guns simply to get even after feuds, as children are gunned down by random bullets, the NRA thinks it is everybody’s constitutional right to have their own personal machine gun.

“This is not exactly the weapon of choice for deer hunting or for a homeowner seeking protection. It is an ideal weapon for street gangs and drug thugs in their wars with each other and the police.

“To legalize fully automatic machine guns is to increase the mayhem that is turning this nation—particularly its large cities—into a continual war zone. Doesn’t the NRA have something better to do?”

Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin

III. Evaluate the following claims, drawing on your understanding of the material covered in chapter 3, “Looking at Language.” (2 points each)

1. I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.

2. NOTICE: Hazard Zone. Small children not permitted beyond this sign.

3. Volunteer help requested: come prepared to life heavy equipment with construction helmet and work overalls.

4. “The liberals--I'm sorry--but the liberals look at your paycheck the way Colonel Sanders looks at chicken.” --George Bush.

5. CHILD’S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN —Headline in Buffalo Courier-Express

IV. Carefully and closely read the following two essays. Identify what you take the main conclusion of the essay to be and standardize the core argument the author cites in support of that conclusion. Do not worry about including each subargument. Concentrate on identifying and standardizing the main argument. (15 points each)

Hetero By Choice?

Richard Parker

For a while there, everybody who could get near a microphone was claiming that only he or she and his or her group, party, faction, religion, or militia stood for real American values.

Now, it was seldom made clear just what those values were supposed to be. I have a notion that if [my son] Alex and I were to go out and knock over a few gas stations and convenience stores, the mere fact that we did it together would make it count as somebody’s family values.

For some, the phrase “family values” never amounted to more than a euphemism for gay-bashing. I remember a [few] years ago, during the loudest squawking about values, when a reporter asked Dan Quayle whether he believed that a gay person’s homosexuality was a matter of his or her psychological makeup or whether it was a matter of choice. He answered that he believed it was mainly a matter of choice. Two weeks later, Barbara Bush was quoted as saying that sexual orientation is mainly a matter of choice. Since then, it’s turned up frequently.

It seems to me that people who make such a remark are either being remarkably cynical (if they don’t really believe it themselves) or remarkably fatuous (if they do believe it).

If it were true that a person’s sexual preference were a matter of choice, then it must have happened that each of us, somewhere back along the way decided what our sexual preference would be. Now, if we’d made such decisions, you’d think that somebody would remember doing it, but nobody does.

In my case, I just woke up one morning when I was a kid and discovered that girls were important to me in a way that boys were not. I certainly didn’t sit down and decide that it was girls who were going to make me anxious, excited, terror-struck, panicky, and inclined to act like an idiot.

Now, if the people who claim to hold the “choice” view were right, it must mean that gay people have always chosen --they’ve decided—to have the sexual orientation they have. Can you imagine a person, back in the 50’s, say, would choose to have to put up with all the stuff gay people had to put up with back then? It’s bad enough now, but only the mad or the criminally uniformed would have chosen such a life back then.

(Actually, it seems clear to me that the whole idea of a preference rules out the notion of choice. I choose to chocolate rather than vanilla, but I don’t choose to prefer chocolate to vanilla. One simply discovers what one prefers.)

If it’s clear that people don’t consciously choose their sexual preferences, why would anybody make such claims? I can think of a cynical reason: It only makes sense to condemn someone for something they choose, not for things they can’t do anything about.

Is it just a coincidence that people who claim to choose our sexual preferences are often the same people who demonize homosexuals? No, of course not. In fact, their cart comes before their horse: They are damned sure going to condemn gay people, and so, since you can only condemn someone for voluntary actions, it must be one’s sexuality is a voluntary choice. Bingo! Consistent logic. Mean, vicious, and mistaken. But consistent.

Abortion and Violence

Henry Morgentaler

At a time when access to safe, medical abortion is being threatened by murderous attacks on doctors providing this service, it would be worthwhile to recapitulate the enormous benefits brought about by legal abortion. I think one of the most important consequences is the declining violent crime rate. This decline has lasted for six years in Canada and the United States.

Is there a relationship between the statistically proven decline in crime rates and access to abortion? For the last six years, in both the United States and Canada, the crime rate has steadily decreased- in particular for crimes of violence, such as assault, rape, and murder. Some demographers explain this by the fact that there are fewer young men around, and it is mostly you men who commit crimes. No doubt this is true, but what is even more important is that, among these young men likely to commit offenses, there are fewer who carry an inner rage and vengeance in their hearts from having been abused or cruelly treated as children.

Why is that? Because many women who a generation ago were obligated to carry any pregnancy to term now have the opportunity to choose medical abortion when they are not ready to assume the burden and obligation of motherhood. It is well documented that unwanted children are more likely to be abandoned, neglected, and abused. Such children inevitably develop an inner rage that in later years may result in violent behavior against people and society. Crimes of violence are very often perpetrated by persons who unconsciously want revenge for the wrongs they suffered as children. This need to satisfy an inner urge for vengeance results in violence against children, women, members of minority groups, or anyone who becomes a target of hate by the perpetrator.

Children who are given love and affection, good nurturing, and a nice supportive home atmosphere usually grow up to become caring, emotionally responsible members of the community. They care about others because they have been well cared for. Children who have been deprived of love and good care, who have been neglected or abused, suffer tremendous harm that may cause mental illness, difficulty in living, and an inner rage that eventually corrupts in violence when they become adolescents and adults.

Most serial killers were neglected and abused children, deprived of love. Both Hitler and Stalin were cruelly beaten by their fathers and carried so much hate n their hears that, when they attained power, without remorse they caused millions of people to die. It is accepted wisdom that prevention is better than a cure. To prevent the birth of unwanted children through family panning, birth control, and abortion is preventive medicine, preventive psychiatry, and prevention of violent crime.