Hypothetical and Disjunctive Arguments

Your friend messages you: “If the 8:10 fast local is on time, I’ll meet you at the college gate.” The train is late. Does that mean she won’t be there? Not necessarily — and the reasoning mistake hiding in that guess is exactly what examiners test in this topic. Hypothetical arguments run on conditions; disjunctive arguments run on alternatives. Get the rules wrong and you build an argument that looks tight but falls apart the moment someone pulls on it.

In two minutes

A hypothetical argument reasons from an if-then statement and a disjunctive argument reasons from an either-or statement — each has exactly one valid direction of reasoning and one direction that only looks valid.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Logic – II on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.