Question

This week we covered conjunctions (and) and disjunctions (or) and their role in communication and argumentation.

In your initial post, address the following: State why it is important to understand the difference between these two connectives.

Explain the difference between the conjunction and the disjunction.

Include in your explanation the specific truth conditions for each connective.

Discuss how communication can be improved by understanding the differences between the conjunction and disjunction.

In order to engage in an active discussion environment, submit your initial discussion post by Wednesday.

Answer 1

Conjunctions (and) and Disjunctions (or) are two of the most important operations in Logics and Boolean Algebra. They are widely used in mathematics in order to prove some assertion and arguments.

Conjunction is an operation on two logical values, typically the values of two propositions, that produces a value of true if both of its operands are true. Disjunction is an operation on two logical values, typically the values of two propositions, that produces a value of true if at least one of its operands is true.

Understanding their difference is extremely important as they can make a proposition true or false. In short, "Disjuctions" are "truth preserving" (i.e. if any one or both of the two propositions are true then using Disjunction will make the final proposition also true), while "Conjunctions" are "falsehood preserving" (i.e. if any of the two propositions is false then using Conjunction will make the resultant proposition false).

Assume that there are two proposition A and B:

Truth table for Disjunction:

A	B	A or B
T	T	T
T	F	T
F	T	T
F	F	F

Truth table for Conjunction :

A	B	A and B
T	T	T
T	F	F
F	T	F
F	F	F