Question:medium

'All men are mortal and Victoria is a woman and hence Victoria is mortal'. This statement is:

Updated On: Jul 15, 2026
  • Logically Valid
  • Logically Invalid
  • Logically True
  • Logically False
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The Correct Option is B

Approach Solution - 1

In a standard categorical syllogism, two premises must share a common 'middle term' that links the subject and predicate of the conclusion. Here the premises are 'All men are mortal' and 'Victoria is a woman,' and the conclusion is 'Victoria is mortal.'

  1. Logically Valid: Not correct. The middle term needed to connect 'Victoria' to 'mortal' would have to run through 'men,' but Victoria is placed in the category 'woman,' not 'men,' so the chain of connection is missing.
  2. Logically Invalid: Correct. Since no premise states that women are men or that women are mortal, there is no valid middle term joining the two premises. The argument's form is defective, so it is invalid, independent of whether Victoria is, in fact, mortal.
  3. Logically True: Not correct, this describes a statement true by logical form alone, not a two-premise inference like this one.
  4. Logically False: Not correct, the conclusion is not contradictory, it is only unproven by these premises.

The correct answer is Logically Invalid.

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Approach Solution -2

A standard categorical syllogism needs exactly three terms: a major term, a minor term, and a middle term that appears in both premises and links the other two. Let's count the terms actually present in 'All men are mortal and Victoria is a woman and hence Victoria is mortal.'

  1. Logically Valid: Listing the terms gives us 'men', 'mortal', 'woman', and 'Victoria', four distinct terms instead of the three a valid syllogism requires. This is a textbook fallacy of four terms, since there is no single middle term shared by both premises, 'men' and 'woman' are not stated to be the same class, so nothing licenses moving from one to the other.
  2. Logically Invalid: With four terms instead of three, the argument commits the fallacy of four terms, there is simply no shared middle term connecting 'men' (where mortality is established) to 'woman' (where Victoria is placed). Without that link, the structure cannot force the conclusion, making the argument invalid regardless of whether the conclusion happens to be true.
  3. Logically True: Being 'logically true' would mean the sentence holds under every possible substitution purely because of its form, the way 'A is A' does. This sentence is a substantive claim drawn from premises, not a formal tautology, so this label doesn't fit.
  4. Logically False: A logically false statement fails under every interpretation, but nothing here is self-contradictory, the sentence simply isn't backed by a properly linked argument.

Counting four separate terms with no shared middle term confirms the structural flaw in the reasoning.

Therefore, the correct answer is Logically Invalid.

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