Math 105 Deductive Reasoning Worksheet: Alice in Wonderland

“How is it you can all talk so nicely?” Alice said…”I've been in many gardens before,
but none of the flowers could talk.”
“Put your hand down, and feel the ground,” said the Tiger-lily. “Then you'll know why.”
Alice did so. “It's very hard,” she said, “but I don't see what that has to do with it.”
“In most gardens,” the Tiger-lily said, “they make the beds too soft—so that the flowers
are always asleep.”
This sounded like a very good reason, and Alice was quite pleased to know it.

The argument that the Tiger-Lily is presenting is as follows:

If the flower bed is too soft, the flowers are always asleep.
If the flowers are always asleep, they don’t talk.
1. According to the Law of Syllogism, what can be concluded?

“Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on.
“I do,” Alice hastily replied; “at least—at least I mean what I say—that's the
same thing, you know.”
“Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. “You might just as well say that ‘I
see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the March Hare, “that ‘I like what I get’ is
the same thing as ‘I get what I like’!”
“You might just as well say,” added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, “that ‘I breathe when I sleep’
is the same thing as ‘I sleep when I breathe’!”
“It IS the same thing with you,” said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a
minute.

The Dormouse is stating the following:

If I sleep, then I breathe;

And
If I breathe, then I sleep.
2. What relation do the two above conditional statements have to each other?
“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and
in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like:
they're both mad.”
“But I don't want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can't help that,” said the Cat: “we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.”
“How do you know I'm mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn't have come here.”
Alice didn't think that proved it at all.

The Cat is claiming that

If you are not mad,
then you wouldn’t have come here.
3. Which of the following statements would the Cat have to agree with?
a. If you are not here, then you are not mad.
b. If you are mad, then you are here.
c. If you are here, then you are mad.

“He's dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he's dreaming
about?”
Alice said “Nobody can guess that.”
“Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly.
“And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”
“Where I am now, of course,” said Alice.
“Not you!” Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. “You'd be nowhere. Why,
you're only a sort of thing in his dream!”
“If that there King was to wake,” added Tweedledum, “you'd go out—bang!—just like a candle!”
“I shouldn't…Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you?”
“Ditto” said Tweedledum.
“Ditto, ditto” cried Tweedledee.
He shouted this so loud that Alice couldn't help saying, “Hush! You'll be
waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise.”
“Well, it no use your talking about waking him,” said Tweedledum, “when
you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real.”
“I am real!” said Alice and began to cry.
“You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying,” Tweedledee remarked.
“I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?” Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
The following is a list of conditional statements presented by Tweedledee and Tweedledum:
If you’re not real, then you’re a thing in the king’s dream.
If your tears aren’t real, then you’re not real.
If you disappear, then you can’t cry.
If you’re a thing in the king’s dream, then when he wakes up you’ll disappear.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum conclude the following: If your tears aren’t real, then you can’t cry.
4. Rearrange the above conditional statements in order to come to the same conclusion as Tweedledee and
Tweedledum did by the Law of Syllogism.