From: Ken Clements (Ken@Innovation-On-Demand.com)
Date: Wed May 15 2002 - 15:29:59 MDT
I do not have too much argument with the wording of the problem, just that your
statement of the conclusion is over broad. The problem is missing {4. All babies
are persons.}, which has been a subject of debate here, and {1} and {3} would be
better prefaced with the word "All," but I will let that slide. (Does this
constitute "great length"?)
Whereas {1} and {3} are generalizations, {2} is rather specific. Your broad
conclusion would have followed had {2} been:
2. All who can manage one or more crocodiles are not despised.
You seem to be aware of an "Official Rules of Inference for Logic Puzzles" spec
that all puzzle designers follow. Is there a URL for this?
I find the idea of "solution" to these puzzles is often more interesting than the
puzzles. If you are taking a test that you want to pass, the "solution" is marking
down whatever the teacher considers to be the correct answer. This is good
training for politics, but not for working with machines (current tech). Decades
of debugging software has conditioned me to look for the boundary conditions where
overlooked details cause the system to screw up. Although I rarely have to reach
for the full predicate calculus, I often use fairly formal logic in what I do, and
suspect this is true for most involved in technology and commerce.
-Ken
(Go put three Benjamin Franklins on Dolly Parton's nose in the fourth, while I
finish this fifth.)
Lee Corbin wrote:
> 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
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:06 MST