Consider only the explicit premises and conclusions of the arguments in Encomium Helen and judge whether each is deductively valid or invalid.

This assignment entry requires students to complete two tasks: (1) Standardize the arguments given in Encomium of Helen by the rhetoritician Gorgias (see pages 46-48 in Mapping the Trees of Knowledge); (2) Attempt to successfully challenge the soundness of Gorgias’ case for freeing Helen from blame. For those of you unfamiliar with the Trojan War and the figure Helen of Troy, please watch this documentary before reading Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen: https://youtu.be/xjwOrbfdOM0 (Length of Video: 1hour 42mins)

For task (1):
Review the source Handout: Logical Arguments posted in the the Course Materials folder of Blackboard for a layout of the general schema of an argument in standard form.
State all explicit premises and conclusions of the arguments found in Encomium of Helen in standard form. Make sure to pay attention to whether the arguments provided are linked logically in some way. For example, sometimes an author will provide arguments for some conclusion just to use that conclusion as a premise in another argument. Always make sure you are always keeping the main conclusion of a reading in mind and are not confusing the conclusions of sub-arguments for the main conclusion.
The following are (rough) definitions for explicit and implicit premises.
Definition. An explicit premise is a premise that is directly said, or written down by the author somewhere in their presentation of an argument.
Definition. An implicit premise is a premise that is assumed, or taken for granted, in order to infer the conclusion of an argument but is not directly said, or written down by the author in their presentation of the argument. (An implict premise is a hidden premise.)
After stating all the explicit premises and conclusions of Gorgias’ arguments in Encomium Helen, consider if there are any implicit premises he is failing to make explicit in his writing. If possible, write out all implicit premises necessary to make Gorgias’ arguments deductively valid in red, italicized font so that they can be clearly distinguished from the explicit premises. If any arguments are found to be necessarily invalid, say why that is so and why one cannot make them valid by adding implicit premises.
Once completing (i)-(iv), move onto the second task (see below).

For task (2):
Consider only the explicit premises and conclusions of the arguments in Encomium Helen and judge whether each is deductively valid or invalid.
Consider both the explicit premises given by Gorgias and the implicit premises you provided on behalf of Gorgias in the attempt to make any of his inferences valid. Do you think someone could deny the truth of any of them? If so, which ones and why?

Here are two definitions you are required to operate within when accomplishing task (2) above:
Definition for Soundness. An argument is sound if and only if the argument is (a) deductively valid and (b) its premises are all true.

Definition for Validity. An argument is deductively valid if and only if it is an inference between propositions such that whenever the premises are taken to be true, the conclusion must be taken as true as well.

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