and let the clause “when we hold him under water for sixty seconds he will
not drown“ be denoted by ~D. Then the argument can be symbolized as
I——>~D
~D
Therefore, I
Notice that this argument is fallacious: the conclusion “he is innocent” is
also a premise of the argument. Hence the argument is circular——it proves wh
at was already assumed. The argument affirms the conclusion then invalidly u
ses it to deduce the premise. The answer will likewise be fallacious.
We start with answer-choice (A)。 The sentence
“To insure that the remaining wetlands survive, they must be protected by th
e government“
contains an embedded if-then statement:
“If the remaining wetlands are to survive, then they must be protected by th
e government.“
This can be symbolized as S——>P. Next, the sentence “This particular wetland
is being neglected“ can be symbolized as ~P. Finally, the sentence ”It will
soon perish“ can be symbolized as ~S. Using these symbols to translate the
argument gives the following diagram:
S——>P
~P
Therefore, ~S
The diagram clearly shows that this argument does not have the same structur
e as the given argument. In fact, it is a valid argument by contraposition.
Turning to (B), we reword the statement “when I eat nuts, I break out in hiv
es“ as
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