Q15 - Linguist: Your philosophers say that we

[Amir.m.shoar]

Hello,

I had some trouble with this question. I did pick D as the right answer, but I'm having a hard time eliminating (A) and (C) as viable answer choices.

[jrs299]

I have no systematic way of dealing with this question. What question type is this anyway, a "Logical Counter" question?

However, my analysis would be this:

"Identical in meaning" and "identical" aren't the same thing. The philosopher is right, the sentences aren't technically identical.

"The steak is on the plate," and, "The ceramic disk exists directly beneath the cooked cow muscle," only share one word in common but they mean the same thing.

(A) is wrong because, by definition, if two things have any differences, they aren't identical. So this doesn't counter the philosopher's argument.

(C) is wrong because this doesn't address the physical differences between the sentences or the "identical meaning"/"actually identical" distinction. I'm not sure this is a correct analysis, anyway, when I was taking the test (D) just FELT stronger to me so I eliminated this one.

(D) is right because it points out the weakness of the philosopher's argument, the difference between "identical in meaning" and "identical"

[ohthatpatrick]

Great explanation! (Hilarious steak plate example)

"Logical counter" questions are essentially just Weaken questions.

This is just asking us, "Which of these choices would most weaken the Philosopher's argument?"

What was the Philosopher's argument core?

CONC:
"J and I are sibs" is NOT identical in meaning to "I and J are sibs"

PREM:
the sentences are physically different
+
being identical requires that two things have all the same attributes
(we can infer from these two premises that the two sentences are NOT identical)

So a simplified core would be:

sentences NOT identical ---> sentences NOT identical in meaning

As the previous poster identified, the logical vulnerability in this argument is the gap between being 'identical' and 'identical in meaning'.

If we're trying to logically counter this argument, we want an answer that accepts the premise but NOT the conclusion, or an answer that points to the logical gap between the premise and the conclusion.

(A) This is fighting the truth of the premise. We'll accept that the two sentences are not identical. We're not trying to fight the premise, but rather to show how you can accept the premise without being forced to derive the conclusion.

(B) This is backwards. This is saying, "Just because two things are identical, that doesn't mean that they're identical in meaning."

We need something that says, "Just because two things are NOT identical, that doesn't mean that they're NOT identical in meaning."

(C) This is only fighting the conclusion. It seems to be saying, "Those two sentences ARE identical in meaning". However, it doesn't engage with the Philosopher's reasoning at all because it doesn't address the link between '~identical --> ~identical meaning'

(D) This just points to the gap between the what the premise is concerned with (whether 2 things are identical) and what the conclusion is concerned with (whether 2 things are identical in meaning).

(E) This is a far cry from a LOGICAL counter; this is a snotty, dismissive counter of, "Shut up, philosopher, you're out of your element here."

Hope this helps.