(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.”
HYPOTHETICAL ARGUMENTS, AND DISJUNCTIVE ARGUMENTS INCLUDING THE DILEMMA.
The proposition, constituting the basic unit of the argument, would of necessity be indicative of the nature of said argument; therefore the three general kinds of propositions, categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive, suggest the three kinds of arguments which are in turn categorical, hypothetical and disjunctive. Categorical arguments are those in which all of the propositions are categorical. Since this kind has been treated, it remains for us to consider the other two.
We have observed that a hypothetical proposition is one in which the assertion depends on a condition; for example, in the proposition, “If it is pleasant, I will call on you to-morrow,” the _calling_ depends on the state of the weather. “I will call on you to-morrow,” is the _assertion_ which is limited by the _condition_, “If the weather is pleasant.” Definition:
_The hypothetical argument or syllogism is one in which the major premise is hypothetical and the minor premise categorical._
If the people are right more than half of the time, the world will progress;
And the people _are_ right more than half of the time,
In contradistinction to _disjunctives_, hypothetical propositions and hypothetical syllogisms are frequently referred to as “_conjunctive_.”