Math 122 Summer 2011 The Difference Between the ideas of Logical Equivalence and Valid Argument Consider

the following argument. If I work hard then I earn lots of money. If I earn lots of money then I pay high taxes. If I work hard then I pay high taxes. If we let p = I work hard and q=I earn lots of money and r=I pay high taxes then this argument can be expressed as (the chain rule):

pq qr -----------p r
The argument is valid if whenever all of the hypotheses are true then the conclusion is true. For this example, the argument is valid if the statement p q q r p r is a tautology. This is not the same as the premises being logically equivalent to the conclusion. Examine the following truth table. p T T T T F F F F q T T F F T T F F r T F T F T F T F p q T T F F T T T T qr T F T T T F T T pr T F T F T T T T p qq r T F F F T F T T p q q r p r T T T T T T T T

In the table above, column 7 is all the premises and'ed together and column 6 is the argument's conclusion. You can see that these are not logically equivalent since they have different truth values for rows 3 and 6. However column 8 is a tautology and so the argument is valid. When trying to show that a given argument is invalid, it is not always enough to say that the given argument is not logically equivalent to a common valid argument. To show that an argument is invalid, you need to show that (premises -> conclusion) is not a tautology. One way to do this is with a truth table.