Week 4 Discussion — What Did the If Promise? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

Everyday "if" sentences often say less, or more, than people take them to mean. This week you learned to read a conditional exactly as it is written and to test the forms built on it, and real speakers sometimes leave room for two careful readers to disagree about what was meant.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: A manager tells a part-time worker (illustrative): "If you cover the weekend shift, you can leave early on the next workday." The worker does not cover the shift and concludes: "So I can't leave early on the next workday." Is the worker reasoning badly, or reading the manager fairly? Rewrite the manager's sentence as it is stated, name the form the worker's reasoning has on that reading, and test it with a counterexample. Then argue whether the manager most likely meant "only if", and say what one added sentence would settle the question.

Option B: Choose a rule from your own life that uses "if" or "only if": a workplace policy, a club or team rule, an app's terms, or a store's return policy (no politicians, parties, or campaigns, and no one's real name). Rewrite it as "if, then", say which condition it makes necessary and which it makes sufficient, and name one conclusion people wrongly draw from it. Then argue whether the rule's wording says what its writer most likely meant.

There is no single right answer here about what a speaker meant. The form an argument has on a given reading is settled by the counterexample method; the real work is defending your reading and running that test on it. Pick the option you actually care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• Rewrite the sentence or rule as "if, then", with the antecedent and the consequent named.
• For Option A, name the form the worker's reasoning has on the stated reading and test it with a counterexample whose premises are all true and whose conclusion is false. For Option B, say which condition is necessary and which is sufficient, and name one conclusion people wrongly draw.
• Say in one sentence what added sentence or detail would settle what the speaker or the writer meant.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (conditional, antecedent, consequent, modus tollens, denying the antecedent, affirming the consequent, necessary condition, sufficient condition) correctly.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep real people's names and live political questions out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: defend the other reading of a classmate's speaker or rule, check whether every premise in their counterexample is really true, or point out where necessary and sufficient have been swapped. "Nice post!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. As stated, the manager said "if you cover the weekend shift, you can leave early on the next workday." The worker reasons: if P, then Q; not P; so not Q. That is denying the antecedent. A counterexample: the worker skips the shift but has already earned an early day by working a holiday, so both premises are true and "I can't leave early" is false. Still, I think the manager probably meant "only if", because covering the shift sounded like a trade. If the manager had added "that's the only way to leave early," the worker's conclusion would follow.

Notice how it rewrites the sentence first, names the form on the stated reading, builds a counterexample with every premise true, and then separates what the words say from what the speaker most likely meant. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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