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Reason Better: An Interdisciplinary Guide to Critical Thinking by David Manley

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4. Entailment
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Reason Better:
An interdisciplinary guide to critical thinking 

Chapter 4. Entailment

Introduction
As we have seen, an argument has the highest degree of suppositional strength when we know that its
premises entail its conclusion. If we were to learn that the premises not only entail the conclusion but they are
also true, the conclusion would be inescapable. However, it's not always obvious whether an argument's
premises entail its conclusion. In this chapter, we will consider some methods and tests that can help us
identify entailment, and investigate some common reasons for misdiagnosing entailment.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you should understand:

the definition of entailment 

how to flip an argument
what logical forms are, and how they are like recipes
how to identify the sentential form of simple arguments
what conditionals, antecedents, and consequents are
the forms modus ponens, modus tollens, hypothetical syllogism and disjunctive syllogism
how to identify the predicate form of simple arguments
why not every deductively valid argument has a deductively valid form
the reasons we sometimes overlook entailment
the relevance of biased evaluation to assessing entailment
the deductively invalid forms affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent.

4.1 Deductive validity 

As we saw in the last chapter, we say that some premises entail a conclusion when they meet this condition: if
the premises were true, the conclusion would also have to be true. In addition, we saw that an argument in
which the premises are presented as entailing the conclusion is called a deductive argument. 

Let's add one more piece of terminology: an argument in which the premises actually do entail the conclusion
(rather than just being presented as if they do) is a deductively valid argument. So a deductively valid
argument, is simply one in which the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion. But it's
important to stress that the kind of guarantee we are talking about is an absolute guarantee, not just a strong
support. For example, consider these two arguments:

          Every raven ever encountered by anyone has been black

          So, the next raven we see will be black

          Only 1 in a million ravens is not black

          So, the next raven we see will be black
In neither argument does the premise entail the conclusion. These arguments may be extremely
suppositionally strong, but in neither case does the premise absolutely guarantee the truth of the conclusion.
It could happen that the premise is true and the conclusion false. It may be very unlikely, but it's still possible.

When premises entail a conclusion, there isn't any possible situation in which the premises are true and the
conclusion false. So, in evaluating whether premises entail a conclusion, we don't take for granted anything
else we happen to know about the world. Instead, we pretend that all we know about the world is that the
premises are true. For example, "Some cars are red" does not entail "Some people drive red cars" because that
takes for granted that people drive cars. It would be a very strange world if there were red cars but nobody ever
drove them—but that situation is not impossible.

Often, of course, when someone presents an argument, they do want us to take for granted some obvious
truths about the world. We just need to be careful to treat any such truths as additional implicit premises when
we are evaluating the argument for deductive validity. It's not uncommon to realize that someone is taking for
granted an implicit premise that isn't true at all. 

Step by step

If an argument's premises entail its conclusion and its premises are true, then the conclusion is
inescapable. But it may take some hard thinking to realize that the conclusion is inescapable, because it may
be hard to tell whether the premises are true, or whether they entail the conclusion.

One kind of case where it's difficult to see that the premises entail the conclusion is when the argument is very
complex. Many "logic puzzles", including those on some standardized tests and IQ tests, are like this. For
example, consider this argument:

        Some monkeys are cute

        Only friendly animals are eating veggies
        No friendly animals are cute
        So, some monkeys are not eating veggies

For most of us, it takes some effort to work out that this is a case of entailment. We can do this by actively
imagining that all the premises are true, which requires holding several different claims in our heads at the
same time, and then seeing if they guarantee the conclusion.

With a complex argument, it's often too difficult to hold all the premises in mind at once in order to suppose
that they are true. So it's often easier to take the argument in more than one step. In the "monkey" argument,
for example, we can take the premises two at a time and see if any pair guarantees an interim conclusion. In
particular, take the first and third premises.
         Some monkeys are cute
         No friendly animals are cute

From these two premises, we can conclude that some monkeys are not friendly animals. We can now try  using
this interim conclusion along with the second premise, and seeing what they entail together:

         Some monkeys are not friendly animals

         Only friendly animals are eating veggies

It's now easier to see that these entails the conclusion, namely that some monkeys are not eating veggies.
Even if it took us multiple steps to get here, the premises of the original argument do entail its conclusion.

Flipping the argument

In addition to taking an argument step-by-step, it can help to try flipping the argument. This means
starting with the conclusion instead of the premises.

When we consider an argument forwards, we suppose all of its premises are true, and ask whether the
conclusion has to be true. When we flip the argument, we suppose its conclusion is false, and ask whether it's
possible for all the premises to be true. If they can still be true even though the conclusion is false, they don't
really entail the conclusion.

The key point to understand here is that the following two features of an argument amount to the same thing:

If all the premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true.
If the conclusion were false, the premises could not all be true.

If you don't see why these amount to the same thing, it's worth spending several minutes thinking about them
until you do.

Imagine a single premise that entails a conclusion—for

example, This horse is a mare entails This horse is female. We know that if a horse is a mare, then that horse
must be female. But that also means that if the horse is not female, then the horse is not a mare. If the
conclusion is false, the premises can't all be true—and in this case, there's just one premise.

Flipping the argument can be a useful tool when the argument is hard to evaluate forwards. It can also be
useful as a way of double-checking for entailment. Let's consider a simple example:

         All mosses are plants that I love

         Some plants that I love are ferns
         So, some ferns are mosses.
Let's try flipping the argument. Suppose that the conclusion is false. That means no ferns are mosses. Could
both premises still be true? The premises say that all mosses—and some ferns—are plants that I love. But that
could be true even if none of the ferns are mosses. (After all, the premises don't say that all the plants I love are
mosses!) So the premises could be true even if the conclusion were false. But that means the premises don't
entail the conclusion.

Section Questions

4-1 Show Correct Answer Show Responses

Consider this argument:

Bob is 13 feet tall

So, Bob is taller than most other people

Suppose there are no implicit premises: this is the whole argument. Which of the following is true about this argument?

A The premise entails the conclusion because, if the premise is true, the conclusion has to be true

The premise does not entail the conclusion because, if the premise is true, the conclusion could still be false
B (setting aside facts not supplied by the premise)

The premise entails the conclusion because, setting aside facts not supplied by the premise, there is no way the
C premise could be true and the conclusion false.

D The premise does not entail the conclusion because it has no suppositional strength.

4-2 Show Correct Answer Show Responses

Consider this argument:

All dogs bark

No fish are dogs
So, no fish bark

What would it mean to "flip" this argument?

 A Suppose that no fish bark, and ask whether it could also be true that all dogs bark and no fish are dogs. The
answer is "yes", so the premises do not entail the conclusion.

Suppose that at least some fish bark, and ask whether it could also be true that all dogs bark and no fish are
B dogs. The answer is "no", so the premises entail the conclusion.

Suppose that at least some fish bark, and ask whether it could also be true that all dogs bark and no fish are
C dogs. The answer is "yes", so the premises do not entail the conclusion.

Suppose that no fish bark, and ask whether it could also be true that all dogs bark and no fish are dogs. The
D answer is "no", so the premises entail the conclusion.

4.2 Logical form

It would be nice if there were an easy way to test for entailment, so that we didn't have to think hard about
whether the premises could be true and the conclusion false. Can't we just identify entailment by the general
shape of an argument?

I have good news and bad news about this. The good news is there are some easy tests that can sometimes
identify entailment. These tests involve checking to see whether an argument has a certain kind of form—and
we can be certain that any argument that fits the form has premises that entail its conclusion. The bad news is
that this won't help us identify every case of entailment. There is no easy test for entailment that will identify
every case.

Argument recipes
Let's start by focusing on the good news. When we say that two arguments have the same form, we mean that
they both follow a kind of general recipe for constructing arguments. For example, consider these two
arguments:

        If mice can talk, then I'm a wizard.

        Mice can talk.
        So, I'm a wizard.

        If the moon is up, the birds are singing.

        The moon is up.
        So, the birds are singing.
In both arguments, the premises entail the conclusion. But they have something else important in common,
which is that the entailment has to do with the sentential connective if...then.... A sentential connective
combines two sentences to form a larger sentence; and in the case of if...then..., the larger sentence that is
formed is called a conditional. In a conditional, the sentence that immediately follows if is called the
antecedent, and the sentence that immediately follows then is called the consequent.

The mice argument and the moon argument both contain a conditional premise, but they also fit a particular
recipe for constructing arguments, which we can describe as follows:

Components: 
Any two sentences
The sentential connective if... then...
Method: 
For the first premise, connect the two sentences with the connective to form a
conditional
For the second premise, use the antecedent of the conditional 
For the conclusion, use the consequent of the conditional

This recipe allows for any two sentences to be combined in this way into an argument. And any argument that
follows this particular recipe will share certain general features, which we can illustrate by using the variables P
and Q to stand in for the two sentences we used:

         If P then Q
         P
        _________
         Q

This schema of an argument, or its logical form, is really just a simple way of presenting the recipe given
above. (Note that although we've arbitrarily chosen an order for the two premises, the order doesn't actually
matter.) Any argument we can get as a result of substituting two sentences for P and Q has this logical form.

This particular logical form is called modus ponens. And it has an important feature: regardless of which two
sentences we substitute in for P and Q, the premises will entail the conclusion. We can see this just by knowing
the positions of those two sentences, and understanding what the words if and then mean. So we can tell that
any argument that has the form of modus ponens will be deductively valid.

Consider a case where we don't even understand the sentences that substitute for P and Q. Here is an
argument with the form of modus ponens using real but seldom-known English words:
         If the road is anfractuous, I shall divagate.
         The road is anfractuous.
         So, I shall divagate. 

We don't need to know what the words anfractuous and divagate mean in order to see that the premises entail
the conclusion—as long as the premises aren't nonsense. All we really need to know is that the argument is
made from two meaningful sentences combined in the right way using if, then, and so.  If it has the form of
modus ponens, it's deductively valid. 

When we have a logical form like modus ponens—one that guarantees deductive validity—we call it a
deductively valid form. As we will see, there are many deductively valid forms, all of which can help us
identify entailment.

Before looking at other deductively valid logical forms, however, I want to return briefly to the bad news
mentioned above. Even though logical forms can help us identify many deductively valid arguments, they
can't help us identify all of them. And that's because some arguments are deductively valid even though they
don't have a deductively valid form. That is, sometimes premises entail their conclusion, even when they don't
have any form that is a general and reliable recipe for entailment. We'll look at some examples after we get
more familiar with various logical forms. But the key point for now is that logical forms can often be used to
diagnose entailment, but can never be used to diagnose the absence of entailment.

Some deductively valid sentential forms

Let's look at some other deductively valid forms that involve replacing whole sentences with variables. The
next one uses two conditionals in a row, linked by a single sentence that is the consequent of one premise and
the antecedent of the other premise. This one is called hypothetical syllogism:

         If P then Q
         If Q then R
         _________
         If P then R

This is pretty straightforward, and we can see why it has to be a deductively valid form because of modus
ponens. If we know both premises are true, then we can see that if P were true, we would have to conclude R
using two applications of modus ponens. So the conclusion encapsulates the fact that, if we knew P were the
case, we would also be in a position to conclude that R is the case.

Here is an argument with the form of a hypothetical syllogism:

        If Bob studies hard, he'll do well on the test
        If Bob does well on the test, he'll be smiling
        So, if Bob studies hard, he'll be smiling.

Note the conditionals we are using in this chapter must be unqualified in order for their forms to be deductively
valid. This can't be hedged with probably, for example, as in If P then probably Q, or even If P then almost
certainly Q. This is especially clear in the case of hypothetical syllogism. It could be that if P there is a better
than even chance of Q, and if Q there is a better than even chance of R, and yet it's not true that if P there is a
greater than even chance that R. As we will see in a later chapter, this is because of the way that probabilities
combine. Despite this, if an argument genuinely has the form of a hypothetical syllogism—which requires that
its conditionals are not hedged—we can be sure that if all the premises are true, the conclusion is also true.

Next, here is a deductively valid logical form called modus tollens:

        If P then Q   
        Not Q
        _________
        Not P

Like the recipe for modus ponens, the recipe for modus tollens calls for any two sentences as well as the
sentential connective if... then.... But it also calls for not, which is shorthand in this logical form for any way of
forming the negation of another sentence.

The negation of a sentence is true when the original

sentence is false, and false when the original sentence is true. Sometimes the negation of a sentence can
simply be formed by putting the word not in front of it. For example, the negation of the sentence All poppies
are red can be formed simply by putting not in front of it: Not all poppies are red.

But sometimes negating a sentence doesn't work that way. For example, to form the negation of some poppies
are red we can't just put not in front of it. Not some poppies are red is not even grammatical! Instead, we have
No poppies are red or There are no poppies that red, or All poppies are not red. (Though be very careful about
that last construction, because in informal English it is syntactically ambiguous between meaning that no
poppies are red and meaning that not all poppies are red—i.e. that some poppies are not red.)

When the logical form of modus tollens calls for Not P, it's really calling for any way of negating P. So, for
example, here is an argument with the form of modus tollens:

        If the poppies are in bloom, Spring is over

        Spring is not over
        So, the poppies are not in bloom
In this example, not is used to form the negation of P and Q, but not just by putting it in front of the whole
sentence. And if you give it enough thought, you will see that the argument's premises entail its conclusion.
Indeed, any argument with the form of modus tollens will entail its conclusion: so modus tollens is a
deductively valid logical form.

So far we've been looking at logical forms involving conditionals, but our next form involves disjunctions. The
disjunction of two sentences P and Q is a sentence that is true as long as either P is true or Q is true, and
false only when both P and Q are false. Sometimes we form the disjunction of two sentences by joining them
with either... or..., but disjunctions can be formed in other ways. For example, to form a disjunction from Bob
danced and Alice danced, we could say Either Bob danced or Alice danced, but we could also use the simpler
sentence Bob or Alice danced. Either way, the disjunction is true as long as at least one of them danced, and
false only if neither danced. (Depending on how you say it, this disjunction can also suggest that they didn't
both dance; let's ignore this and assume that P or Q is true when P and Q are both true.). [1]

A common deductively valid logical form using disjunction is illustrated by the following argument:

         The sun is either rising or setting

         The sun is not rising
         So, the sun is setting.

You can tell that the argument given above entails its conclusion.

But another way to identify the entailment is to notice that it has the deductively valid form known as
disjunctive syllogism. The form of disjunctive syllogism is this:

         Either P or Q
         Not P
         _________
         Q

Note that this also works if the negated premise is Q and the conclusion is P: if either component sentence in
the disjunction is false, you can conclude that the other one is true.

Some deductively valid predicate forms

So far, we've only been looking at deductively valid logical forms containing variables that take the place of
entire sentences. But consider this argument:

        All dogs are mammals

        Fido is a dog
        So, Fido is a mammal

The premises entail the conclusion. And in fact, any argument formed by replacing the words dog, mammal,
and Fido with other words in the same grammatical category would also entail its conclusion. For example:

        All toasters are time-travel devices

        Fred is a toaster
        So, Fred is a time-travel device

This is a weird argument: the first premise is obviously false, and who names their toasters? Still, if the
premises were true, the conclusion would have to be true.

The two arguments we just considered entail their

conclusions for the same reason: they seem to share a form. But if we replace all the non-compound sentences
in these arguments with variables, the form we get is:

        P
        Q
        ______
        R

This is absolutely not a deductively valid form. So, to illustrate the structural feature that the two arguments
above share, we can replace parts of each sentence with variables. In particular, we will hold fixed the words
they share and replace the common nouns with variables, using F, G, H... rather than P, Q, R... in order to clarify
that they are not substituting for whole sentences. And we will use a lower-case n for any proper name. This
gives us the following deductively valid logical form:

         All F are G
         n is an F
         _________
         n is a G

Any argument formed by replacing F and G with common nouns, and n with a proper name will be one in
which the premises entail the conclusion.

But wait: what happens when we're not just using common nouns? For example, All dogs are mammals
contains two nouns, but what if the first premise had been All dogs bark or All dogs are happy? Logicians solve
this by recasting those sentences slightly so that they fit the mold:
        All dogs bark —> All dogs are barking things
        All dogs are happy —> All dogs are happy things

This way, barking thing and happy thing count as

substitutions for G in the deductively valid form given above. In other words, we can treat them as predicates in
our logical form. (This is why we call logical forms that use variables for predicates and names predicate forms,
and logical forms that use variables for entire sentences sentential forms.)

There are many deductively valid predicate forms, and it's worth taking a look at some of them and making
sure you understand why they are deductively valid. (Two important points for how these forms are used: as
used in these forms, some F are G means at least one F is G, and does not guarantee that some F are also not G.
Also, every name is assumed to refer to a real object.)

These are all deductively valid logical forms, and there are many others. We won't be giving them names in this
text, because it's unrealistic to think we would memorize a long list of deductively valid logical forms and then
be able to recognize arguments with those forms in everyday life. If we do encounter arguments with these
forms, it's easier just to assess whether the premises guarantee the conclusion!

However, it is useful to acquire the skill of quickly identifying entailment. And one aspect of that skill is being
able to see that an argument has a deductively valid form. The best way to acquire this ability is not to
memorize a list of deductively valid forms: it's to repeatedly engage with arguments and logical forms until it
becomes easier to see which forms are deductively valid and which are not—that is, to practice.

The forms above are listed so that you can spend some time trying to understand why each of them is
deductively valid. (In some cases it may be easier to understand why a form is deductively valid if you flip it:
assume the conclusion is false and then see why the premises could not then be true.) It's good practice.

Counterexamples