Easy Tricks To Solve Syllogism Questions

Syllogism is one of the chapters under the analytical reasoning section that is highly important for every government examination. Syllogism is a  fight that happens between two or more contrasting statements, where each statement is depicting some different context, but we understand the context of each statement and reach a point to conclude out the final expression that satisfies all the statements. In this article, your doubts such as what is syllogism? What is the syllogistic meaning? What are the rules of syllogism? , etc. 

What Is Syllogism?

Syllogism is the process in which there are two or more statements provided in a logical problem. Each and every statement has some logic behind it. Each statement has a different context and depicts a completely different story than other statements. We have to read all the statements and find out the best conclusion that can be extracted by finding an intersection of all the logic from the statements but, the logical conditions of all statements must be held.

Important Terms Of Syllogism

Proposition(Premise)

A proposition is another name of a premise. A proposition has three parts which are a subject, a copula, and a predicate. All propositions have some grammatical logic behind them.

1. Subject: – The story and logic of a proposition are said for some identity, and that identity is a subject.

2. Predicate: – There is a part in the statement that is either affirming or denying that subject is this or that, etc. That part is the predicate of a proposition.

3. Copula: – Copula is the part of a proposition that defines the relationship between the predicate and the subject.

E.g Boy is tall.

Here, information and details are given about the “Boy”. Hence, “Boy” is easily a subject.

“Tall” is the attribute that affirms the subject “Boy”. Hence, “tall” is a predicate.

“Is” is displaying the relation between “Boy” and “tall”, therefore “is” is a copula. 

Rules Of Syllogism

Rule1. If one of the statements is negative, then the conclusion has to be a negative case. 

For example, 

Statements

All cartoons are rivers.

No river is small.

Conclusions

1. No cartoon is small.

2. All cartoons are small. 

Since, statement 2 is a negative case. So, according to rule 1, the conclusion of the problem is negative. Hence, Conclusion 1 is a better choice than Conclusion 2.

Rule2. If both the statements are positive and affirmative, then the conclusion has to be a positive and affirmative case.

For example,

Statements

All notebooks are schools.

All schools are papers.

Conclusions

1. All notebooks are papers.

2. Some schools are not notebooks.

Since both statement 1 and statement 2 are positive, the conclusion has to be affirmative and positive as well. Hence, Conclusion 1 is a better choice than Conclusion 2.

Easy Tricks To Solve Syllogism Questions

The easy trick to solve syllogistic meaning questions is not much of a flying an airplane kind task but just implying Venn Diagrams to plot and calculate about the unions and intersections will sort the question quickly.

So, let’s assume there are two statements S and P.

There are four sets of question patterns that are asked frequently, so we’ll understand them.

1. All S are P

From this we can definitely conclude that:

All parts of S’s are some parts of P’s.

Some parts of S’s are parts of P’s.

And some parts of P’s are parts of S’s.

But we cannot be sure that:

All parts of P’s are parts of S’s

Some parts of P’s are not parts of S’s 

2. No S are P 

No parts of Ss are parts of P’s

No parts of P’s are parts of S’s

Some parts of P’s are not parts of S’s

Some parts of S’s are not parts of P’s

And no conclusion is possible to derive from this case. 

3. Some S are P 

We conclude that

Some parts of S’s are parts of P’s.

Some  parts of P’s are parts of S’s.

There are a few more chances that can portray some S are P. If S is kept entirely inside P, then some part of S will come inside P. If P is kept entirely inside S, then some part of P will come inside S.

4. Some S are not P 

We can conclude that 

Some parts of S’s are not parts of P’s.

Some parts of P’s are not parts of S’s. 

There are a few more chances that can portray some S are not P.

If P is kept entirely inside S, then we can say that some part of S is not inside P.

If S and P are kept together without having any intersection between them, then also we can get some S that are not in part of P.

Conclusion

We have to read all the statements and find out the best conclusion that can be extracted by finding an intersection of all the logic from the statements but, the logical conditions of all statements must be held. Syllogism is the single topic that can aid in your marks by adding up to 10-20 marks because there are 4-5 questions from syllogism asked in every exam. If you prepare syllogism, you will be benefited enormously. We have discussed what is syllogism, the syllogistic meaning, rules of syllogism, and what are tricks to solve syllogism questions.