Logic Writing Assignment #6

Diagram the arguments below. On the paper you email me, write the arguments in standard form, indicating the conclusions by starting with the word ‘Therefore’. When there is more than one premise for a conclusion, indicate whether each of them are dependent or independent in parentheses at the end of the premise. On the version you turn in on Monday, add a written diagram at the end of each argument, using the numbers assigned in standard form.

1. In spite of the fact that electrons are physical entities, they cannot be seen for electrons are too small to deflect photons (i.e., light particles). Hence, electrons are invisible.

2. Since major historical events can’t be repeated, historians aren’t scientists. This doesn’t mean that I don’t respect the work that historians do. But the scientific method necessarily involves events (called “experiments”) that can be repeated.

3. There is no better way to arouse American citizens than to order them around or tell them what to think. It is true that there are many people in this country who would like to organize us more thoroughly and tidy up the freedom we have by a little more control. But we reserve the personal right to plunge our own way into our own mistakes and discoveries, in art, philosophy, education, or politics.

4. Some people seem to be under the impression that humans are making moral progress. I submit that the 20^th century is a movement backwards into violence and cruelty. For in spite of the fact that science and technology have developed rapidly, the greatest mass murders in history have all occurred in this century. Millions died on the battlefields of World Wars I and II. Six million Jews died in Nazi prison camps. And from 1917 until the end of Stalin’s reign, 20 million people died in Soviet work camps. It makes me ill to think about it. More recently, we have Pol Pot’s slaughter of the Cambodians as well as the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. What a horrible century this has been.

5. There is no life after death. For what’s real is what you can see, hear, or touch. And you can’t see, hear, or touch life after death. Furthermore, life after death is possible only if humans have souls. But the notion of a soul belongs to a prescientific and outmoded view of the world. And hence, the belief in souls belongs to the realm of superstition.