Homework Help: Help with deductive reasoning

Posted by Chrissy on Monday, October 5, 2009 at 12:33am.

Determine whether you can use the Law of Syllogism to reach a valid conclusion from each set of statements.

1. If a dog eats Superdog Dog Food, he will be happy.
Rover is happy.

2. If an angle is supplementary to an obtuse angle, then it is acute.
If an angle is acute, then its measurement is less than 90.

3. If the measure of angle A is less than 90, then angle A is acute.
If angle A is acute, then angle A is congruent to angle B.

Help with deductive reasoning - jim, Monday, October 5, 2009 at 5:05am
Let's take the first one.

You can make a syllogism if you have two statements like:

(1) If A, then B _and_
(2) Rover is A
(3)_then_ you can say that Rover is B

Now:
(1) If a dog eats Superdog Dog Food, he will be happy.
(2) Rover is happy.

What is "A" here? it's "eats Superdog Dog Food". Does (2) say anything about "eats Superdog Dog Food"? No. So you don't have a syllogism. Rover might or might not eat Superdog Dog Food; we don't know.

So there is no syllogism here.

Now try the other two.

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