Supply the missing premise or conclusion of the ff. enthymeme in such a way that the resulting syllogism is valid. Write the resulting syllogism in standard form and test it for validity using a Venn diagram. What things would you into account in evaluating it?

Question:

Legislation that can't be enforced leads to disrespect for the law, so legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense leads to disrespect for the law.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Claudia,

I'm also working on this exact same question in my philosophy course right now! And the search engine has brought me to this page. Anyway...

From the passage, I think we can formulate a premise and a conclusion, i.e., the sentence before "so" is a premise and the sentence after is the conclusion.

Since a conclusion has been stated, I believe we're now missing a premise in this enthymeme. Remember that the missing premise/conclusion must make the whole syllogism valid.

This is what I have on my paper:
Premise #1: legislation that can’t be enforced leads to disrespect for the law.
Premise #2: marijuana possession cannot be enforced by legislation. **assumed premise**
Conclusion: legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense leads to disrespect for the law.

All S is P
M is S
Therefore, M is P

Not saying that my answer is correct since my assignment hasn't been marked, but I think this makes for sense and also my Venn diagram validates it.

Hope it helps,
Octavio :)

Please understand that no one here will do your work for you. However, we will be happy to read over whatever you come up with and make suggestions and/or corrections.

Please post what you think.

Thanks. It's my first time using this site and wanted to see what suggestions i might get. What i come up with is..

Legislation that cannot be enforced are disrespect for the law.
All marijuana possession are disrespect for the law.
Therefore, disrespect for the law are legislation that cannot be enforced.

And what i would take into account is Legislation that cannot be enforced, marijuana possession.

Thanks

Thank you so much Octavio. I appreciate your help. I wonder what program you're taking. Maybe i can be of help to you in some courses i've taken and maybe you're yet to take.

To complete the missing premise in the enthymeme, we need to identify the missing premise that would make the resulting syllogism valid. The given enthymeme is as follows:

1. Legislation that can't be enforced leads to disrespect for the law,
2. ???
3. Legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense leads to disrespect for the law.

In this case, the missing premise (the second premise) should connect the first premise with the conclusion. One possible missing premise that would make the syllogism valid is:

2. Legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense is legislation that can't be enforced.

Now, let's construct the resulting syllogism in standard form using the complete premises:

1. Legislation that can't be enforced leads to disrespect for the law.
2. Legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense is legislation that can't be enforced.
3. Legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense leads to disrespect for the law.

To evaluate the validity of this syllogism, we can use a Venn diagram to represent the possible relationships between the terms involved. In this case, we have three terms: "legislation that can't be enforced," "legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense," and "disrespect for the law."

In the Venn diagram, we would draw two overlapping circles to represent the relationships between the terms. Let's label one circle as "legislation that can't be enforced" and the other as "disrespect for the law." The term "legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense" would fall within the circle of "legislation that can't be enforced" since that is the legislation in question. The Venn diagram would show that any legislation within the circle of "legislation that can't be enforced" leads to "disrespect for the law."

By representing the syllogism using a Venn diagram, we can visually see the relationship between the terms and determine if it is valid. If the diagram shows that all instances in which "legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense" is within the circle of "legislation that can't be enforced" also fall within the circle of "disrespect for the law," then the syllogism is valid.

When evaluating the validity of a syllogism using a Venn diagram, we consider the composition, distribution, and overlap of the terms involved. Composition refers to the inclusion of particular instances within a term, distribution refers to whether the term is distributed (refers to all instances) or not distributed (refers to some instances), and overlap refers to the relationship between the circles representing the terms.

In this case, the validity of the syllogism would depend on whether the representation of the terms in the Venn diagram aligns with the given premises and conclusion. If the diagram shows that all instances in which "legislation making marijuana possession a criminal offense" falls within the circle of "legislation that can't be enforced" also fall within the circle of "disrespect for the law," then the syllogism is valid.