The following argument is sound:
All cities have terrible public transit.
Oakville has terrible public transit.
Therefore, Oakville is a city.

Question

The following argument is sound:
All cities have terrible public transit.
Oakville has terrible public transit.
Therefore, Oakville is a city.

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

When evaluating whether this argument is sound, begin by unpacking its structure and what soundness requires.
Option 1: True. If we suppose the argument is sound and therefore true, we would be claiming that the conclusion follows legitimately from the premises in a valid form with all true premises. The given premises are: (1) All cities have terrible public transit. (2) Oakville has terrible public transit. From these, the conclusion offered is: Oakville is a city. Logically, from a universal claim about a group (cities) and a particular member of that group having the property, we cannot validly infer that the particular member is a city. The reasoning here resembles affirming the consequent or a non sequitur, since P -> Q and Q does not entail P. So as a matter of logical form, the argument is not valid, and thus cannot be sound. Therefore describing Option 1 as True would be incorrect.
Option 2: False. This option asserts that the argument is not sound. There are two components to soundness: validity of the argument form and truth of the premises. Even if we grant premises, the form remains invalid because the conclusion does not logically follow from the premises. Moreover, even if the premises happened to be true in some world, the move from “All cities have P” and “Oakville has P” to “Oakville is a city” is still a fallacious jump; it does not establish what kind of thing Oakville is. Hence the overall evaluation is that the argument is not sound, aligning with the claim in Option 2. This makes False the correct classification for the soundness question, given standard deductive criteria.
Additional nuance: Some students might worry about the truth value of “All cities have terrible public transit.” Even if one were to grant that premise, the inference remains invalid. The core mistake is confusing a property of a set with a property of an individual unrelated to membership in that set, which is a common fallacy in informal reasoning. Therefore, the correct assessment is that the argument is not sound, supporting Option 2's claim against the soundness of the argument.
In sum, True would assert a valid soundness that the argument does not establish, whereas False correctly identifies that the argument is not sound due to invalid structure and questionable premises.

The following argument is sound: All cities have terrible public transit. Oakville has terrible public transit. Therefore, Oakville is a city.

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