If by "a logical answer" you mean an answer that is logically consistent , then I agree that every well-posed question has a logical answer. Nevertheless, the logically consistent answer to some question will often rely on information from beyond the subject matter of logic. The answer to why a particular cow has four legs will rely on information about the cow's parentage, genetics, embryology, anatomy, or some such. Logic all by itself cannot answer that question.

The syllogism in question is not valid. Nothing logically guarantees that the set of single girls and the set of sad girls overlap. Even if both sets have members, it does not follow that they have any members in common. Compare: Some polygons are squares. Some polygons are triangles. But it is false that some polygons are square triangles.

Using "> " for material implication, (P > Q) is equivalent to each of (~ P v Q) and (Q v ~ P). So you can deduce either of those disjunctions. I think it's just a matter of convention to favor the first of them. The reader is expected to notice the equivalence of the two disjunctions. Now, (Q v ~ P) is certainly not equivalent to (~ Q v ~ P). From Q, you can infer the first of those disjunctions but not the second. The disjunction (Q v ~ P) is equivalent to (P > Q), whereas the disjunction (~ Q v ~ P) is equivalent to (P > ~ Q) and (Q > ~ P).

If a paradox resulted whenever one thing had more than one name, then these paradoxes wouldn't be restricted to sets. The names 'Samuel Clemens' and 'Mark Twain' would generate a paradox by referring to the same person. But, of course, there's no paradox here. Everything true of the person named 'Samuel Clemens' is true of the person named 'Mark Twain'. Mark Twain was born in Missouri, and Samuel Clemens wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Indeed, all those who know that Mark Twain wrote the novel thereby also know de re (Latin for 'concerning the thing') that Samuel Clemens wrote the novel: they know, concerning the person denoted by 'Samuel Clemens', that he wrote the novel, even if they wouldn't use 'Samuel Clemens' to denote the author.

I don't want to do your assigned coursework for you, so I'll say just this: Think about how modern logic translates "All S is P" and "All S is not P" into symbols.

It sounds to me as though your teacher may be using the awkward expression "Only if A, then B" as a way of asserting the biconditional "A if and only if B," which is equivalent to the biconditional "B if and only if A." As I say, the expression is awkward, but in any case I wouldn't read it as adding a modal operator like "Necessarily" to the conditional "If A, then B." Whoever wants to say "necessarily" really needs to use that word. Other than your teacher's decision, I can't think of any reason to treat "Only if A, then B" as the biconditional "A if and only if B." The form "Only if A, then B" isn't something you'll encounter in idiomatic English. Competent speakers wouldn't say, "Only if all humans are mortals, then all nonmortals are nonhuman." Instead, they'd say "All humans are mortals if and only if all nonmortals are nonhumans." But it's probably wise to follow your teacher's decision, at least until you're done with the course!

Like you, I'm puzzled by the form of the conditional "Only if A, then B." It doesn't seem to be idiomatic English. One might say "Only if you go to the party will I go," but one wouldn't say "Only if you go to the party, then I will go." That would be unidiomatic. So I presume that the conditional form you're learning is "Only if A, B" rather than "Only if A, then B." I would interpret "Only if A, B" as stating that A is a necessary condition for B, and therefore implying that B is a sufficient condition for A. If one wants to say that A is both necessary and sufficient for B, then one can say "If and only if A, B" -- although "A if and only if B" would be a smoother way of saying it. In any case, make sure that your logic teacher really did say "Only if A, then B" and, if so, ask if he/she meant to say "Only if A, B."

Interesting question! I think you're right that there's something peculiar about this disjunctive syllogism: (1) B v ~ B (2) ~ B (3) ~ B You say that (2) must be the negation of (1)'s left disjunct rather than the assertion of (1)'s right disjunct, even though both of those are syntactically the same. You may find allies in those who distinguish between (i) denying or rejecting a proposition and (ii) asserting the proposition's negation. See Section 2.5 of this SEP entry . But here's a different diagnosis. Although (1)-(3) is a valid argument, and even a valid instance of disjunctive syllogism, the argument is informally defective because premise (1) is superfluous: (1) isn't needed for the argument's validity. Furthermore, anyone justified in asserting (2) is thereby justified in asserting (3) without need of (1). This argument is similar: (4) ~ B v B (5) ~ ~ B (6) B The claim that (5) is the negation of (4)'s left disjunct is at least as plausible as the claim that (2) is the negation of (1...

It's a good idea to distinguish between epistemic uses of modal language (which have to do with our knowledge) and alethic uses (which have to do with truth independently of our knowledge). When you say, "It is possible that this page is white," you might be wearing tinted glasses and simply admitting that, for all you know, the page that looks amber to you is in fact white (i.e., it looks white to normal observers in normal conditions). That use of "possible" would be epistemic. Or, instead, you might be saying that the page, which in fact emerged a mottled gray from the unreliable paper mill, could have been white had the mill done a better job. Or you might simply infer from the fact that the page is white that it's possible that the page is white: what is true is of course also possible. Those uses of "possible" would be alethic. Where do alethic modal concepts belong? I'd say that they belong to logic, in the sense that they are at the foundation of the concept of logical consequence. To...

I don't know that book in particular, but I can give you a standard explanation that at least makes sense of the view you find puzzling. In Aristotle's logic, any statement of the form "All S are P" implies that at least one S is P, so the statement comes out false (rather than vacuously true) if nothing is S. By contrast, in contemporary logic, "All S are P" is interpreted as saying "For anything at all, if it is S, then it is P": it is interpreted as a universal quantification applied to a conditional statement. Crucially, the conditional statement "If it is S, then it is P" is standardly treated as a truth-functional conditional that is equivalent to the disjunction "It is not S, or it is P." Now suppose that nothing is S, so that "It is not S" is true of everything. Then the disjunction "It is not S, or it is P" will come out true no matter what we substitute for "it," because a true disjunction needs only one true disjunct. In that case, the truth-functional conditionals "If it is S, then it...