Module 2: Identifying the Premises & Conclusions

Question 1

Feral cats are a major problem for urban centres. They carry disease, they are noisy, and they destroy wildlife.

Answer 1

Conclusion: Feral cats are a major problem for urban centres.
Premises:
Feral cats carry disease.
Feral cats fight, noisy, destroy wildlife

Question 2

Good health depends on good nutrition. Good nutrition requires a budget adequate to buy some fresh fruits and vegetables. Therefore, good health requires a budget adequate to buy some fresh fruits and vegetables.

Answer 2

Conclusion: Good health requires a budget adequate to buy some fresh fruits and vegetables.
Premises:
Good health depends on good nutrition.
Good nutrition requires a budget adequate to buy some fresh fruits and vegetables

Question 3

It is well known that dolphins, whales, and elephants communicate with each other. In fact, even bees communicate with each other. So you can see that human beings are not the only animals that communicate.

Answer 3

Conclusion: Human beings are not the only animals that communicate.
Premises:
Dolphins, whales, elephants, bees, communicate with each other.

Question 4

“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion is still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. If wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error”

Answer 4

Conclusion: Silencing the expression of an opinion is robbing the human race.
Premise: If the opinion is right, posterity is deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth.
If the opinion is wrong, posterity loses the clearer perception and livelier impressions of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Question 5

“One immediate retort to the idea that a market society without governing institutions is a decent society is that a market society includes economic organizations, particularly monopolies and cartels, which are in fact governing institutions. The coercive power of monopolies is no less than that of political institutions. Thus, the idea that a market society is free of institutions that have the power to humiliate people is a fairy tale.”

Answer 5

Conclusion: It is not the case that a market society without governing institutions is a decent society.
Premises: A market society includes economic organizations, particularly monopolies and cartels, which are in fact governing institutions.
The coercive power of monopolies is no less than that of political institutions.
The idea that a market society is free of institutions that have the power to humiliate people is a fairy tale. .