UNIT III

MATHEMATICAL REASONING

Chapter III: Symbolic Argument

Target Outcomes

At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:

1. Be able to translate worded arguments into symbolic form, and to;
2. Test arguments as valid or invalid arguments.

Abstraction

Argument

An argument is a set of statements, one of which is called the conclusion and

the rest are called premises. It can be said that an argument is valid if the conclusion
must be true whenever the premises are all true. It is considered invalid if for all
premises to be true and the conclusion is false.

Example 3.5:

Consider the following arguments:

If Eden eats her vegetables, then she can have a dessert. Premise
Eden eats her vegetables. s

∴ Eden gets a dessert Conclusion

If Romeo invests his money in SM Corp., then he will get rich.

Romeo did not invest his money in SM Corp.

Therefore, Romeo did not get rich.
 Are these arguments valid? Hopefully you agree that the first argument is but not
the second is not. Intuitively we can deduct that the first is logically valid since the set
condition on the first premise is satisfied thus arriving to the conclusion. The second
argument is invalid because the conclusion that Romeo did not get rich due to him not
investing in SM Corp is somewhat farfetched because investing money to SM Corp. is
not the only way to get rich. Detailed process of testing the validity of an argument will
be explained in the next topic.

Validity Testing

Earlier it has been said that an argument is valid when the conclusion is true
given that all premises are true, otherwise it is invalid. To show that these conditions of
validity, we make use of the truth tables. Yes! we will construct a truth table. But first we
need to translate first the argument into its symbolic form
Example 3.6:
Step 1: Translate the argument into symbolic form

p → q
If Eden eats her vegetables, then she can have a dessert.
Eden eats her vegetables p

∴ Eden gets a dessert

q

𝒑→𝒒 1
𝒑 2
∴𝒒

Step 2: Construct the truth table.

2 1 ∴
p q 𝒑→𝒒 q

T T T T
 T F F F

F T T T

F F T F

• In constructing the truth table, it is best to construct the truth tables of the premises
and the conclusion.
We can see that on the first row the premises are true and the conclusion is also
true. And upon inspecting the remaining three rows, there is no instance that the
premises are true but the conclusion is false. Hence wen can say that the argument is
valid.

Example 3.7:

p → q
If Romeo invested his money in SM Corp., then he will get rich.
¬𝑝
Romeo did no invest his money in SM Corp.
p
Therefore, Romeo did not get rich. ¬𝑞
p

𝒑→𝒒
¬𝒑
∴ ¬𝒒

Truth Table:

1 2 ∴
p q 𝒑→𝒒 ¬𝒑 ¬𝒒
 T T T F T

T F F F F

F T T T T

F F T T F

Analyzing the truth table, the conclusion on the fourth row is false given that the
premises are true. Hence, we can say that the argument is invalid. The third row may
have shown that the conclusion is true given that the premises are all true. However,
since the fourth row shows an instance that the conclusion is false with the premises
are all true, it is safe to conclude that the argument is invalid.