In: Advanced Math
Translate the following argument into symbolic form and determine weather it's logically correct by constructing a truth table. Money causes all the world's troubles or money helps the poor. If money helps the poor, it is not the cause of all the worlds troubles. Money is the cause of all the world's troubles. Therefore, money does not help the poor. Please show how the problem was solved!
Let us denote the predicates as follows:
The premises are that the following are TRUE:
Note that
is logically equivalent to
and
is logically equivalent to
. Since
is true, we have
is true if and only if
is false.
Alternatively, here is the truth table. Here
denotes TRUE and
denotes FALSE.
P | Q | P OR Q | IF P THEN NOT Q | |
T | T | T | F | |
T | F | T | T | |
F | T | T | T | |
F | F | F | T |
As the table shows, the only truth value of
that ensures truth value
(TRUE) for
,
, and
, is that
be FALSE.
Therefore, the argument is logically correct.