Exam 3: Logic and Language

Ostensive definitions are a type of extensional definition.

Using the six definitional criteria, evaluate the following: To explain an event means to provide a causal explanation identifying causes.

Using the six definitional criteria, evaluate the following: A counterfactual conditional is a conditional that expresses a counterfactual proposition.

Using the six definitional criteria, evaluate the following: A chair is a piece of furniture that is used for sitting.

Using the six definitional criteria, evaluate the following: A liberal is a man who won't take his own side in an argument. (Robert Frost)

A word is vague to the extent that it has "borderline cases" in which there is no precise way to determine whether the word applies.

The problem of equivocation occurs when a word (or phrase) is used with more than one meaning in an argument but the validity of the argument depends on the word's being used with the same meaning throughout.

A word is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning.

A persuasive definition is a definition that seems to make sense to most people.

A term's intension is the set of things to which the term applies.

A lexical definition reports the conventional or established (intensional) meaning of a term.

The cognitive meaning of a statement is the element of the statement that elicits emotions.

A definition is too wide (too broad) if the definiens applies to objects outside the extension of the definiendum.

Using the six definitional criteria, evaluate the following: A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. (Oscar Wilde)

If a persuasive definition is employed in the following dialog, explain its weakness in terms of the six criteria for definitions; if it is instead a merely verbal dispute, identify the word or phrase that has a double meaning, and provide a definition for both meanings. Bob: Sammy Sosa was a better athlete than Tiger Woods. Sosa could beat Woods in a race any day! Sue: No way! Woods is the better athlete. He hits a ball farther than Sosa ever could!

An ostensive definition is one that specifies the meaning of a term by

The following argument involves the use of emotionally loaded language. Write a well-crafted version of the argument, replacing the emotionally loaded verbiage with more neutral language. Is it wrong to conduct medical research on animals? Is it wrong to trap an innocent creature, one whose only crime is availability and no representation, to confine it in dreadful isolation, in an inhumanely small space whose environmental conditions are foreign, to force feed it on the cheapest diet possible, and, in the interim, to perform ungodly acts upon it causing horrible pain?

Two different statements may express the same proposition.

Write a well-crafted version of the following argument, identifying any equivocations or persuasive definitions: Although communism is a bad word in this country, that is just because people don't understand it. "Communism" means a social and economic system in which people care for one another-in which the strong and fortunate help the weak and disadvantaged. Accordingly, communism is a good thing, and those opposed to it must simply misunderstand its nature.

Write a well-crafted version of the following argument, identifying any equivocations or persuasive definitions: Our elected officials are all politicians, and therefore crooks. A politician is, by definition, someone who exploits as many small people as possible in grasping power. Anyone who does that is a crook. But in order to get elected these days, one must successfully play the political game; that is, one must be a politician.