From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 08:47:26 MDT
Ken writes
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> 1. Babies are illogical;
> 2. No one is despised who can manage a crocodile;
> 3. Illogical persons are despised.
>
>> The answer to the Lewis Carroll puzzle: From 1 and 3,
>> we have "babies are despised", and since "no one is despised
>> who can manage a crocodile", it follows that babies cannot
>> manage crocodiles.
>
> Not quite. It follows that no one baby can manage a crocodile. However, it
> is not necessarily true that "babies cannot manage crocodiles" because no
> restriction was placed on the abilities of despised persons acting as a group
I disagree. The meaning of "Babies are illogical" in logic
does not mean that collectively babies as a group are illogical.
Do you seek to force everyone to reword at great length all
such puzzles? ;-) Likewise, "babies cannot manage crocodiles"
does *not* mean, in logic puzzles, that babies cannot collectively
manage crocodiles.
Lee
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