Statement: Some roses are red. Conclusion: All red things are roses.
2023
Statement: Some roses are red.
Conclusion: All red things are roses.
- A.
True
- B.
False
- C.
Can't say
- D.
None of the above
Attempted by 2 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept: In syllogistic conversion, a particular affirmative statement ("Some A are B") only licenses the limited converse "Some B are A." It never licenses the universal converse "All B are A" — that step is the classic illicit-conversion fallacy, since a partial overlap between two groups says nothing about whether one group is fully contained inside the other.
Application: Here the statement 'Some roses are red' only tells us that roses and red things overlap in at least one member. The conclusion 'All red things are roses' asserts that red things are entirely contained within roses — a universal claim that a merely-partial-overlap statement can never establish.
Contrast: Checking this classification against the other labels:
"True" would require the conclusion to be a definite, valid inference from the statement — but a partial-overlap premise can never entail a full-containment conclusion, so this is ruled out.
"Can't say" would fit if the relationship were genuinely undetermined case-by-case — but the conversion rule here is fixed, not situational: this kind of universal conclusion can never be validly drawn from a partial-overlap premise, so the outcome is settled, not open.
"None of the above" would apply only if none of the offered labels correctly classified the relationship — but one of them does.
So the conclusion does not follow from the statement — the correct classification is False.